Advanced Monitoring Tools for Reproducible Hydrogels 3D-Printing for Medical and Clinical Applications

具有非常规和极端性质的先进材料正在成为生物医学、工业、化工、机械、制药和光学等多个领域产生和推动创新的关键因素，从而确保竞争力并影响经济增长。毫无疑问，加法制造是最新、用途最广、潜力最大的材料加工技术之一。聚合物凝胶或聚合物凝胶和细胞的混合物的3D打印或3D生物打印构成了制造具有定制成分的样品的两种创新方法，使得有可能将细胞的成分梯度产生到相同的样品中。利用这项技术，有可能以一种非均质的方式和跨越样品几何形状的方式赋予新的特征，例如对选定的细胞、对广泛的底物具有更高的抵抗力或生物吸引力。我们建议通过NSERC RTI计划获得的设备包括两个易于使用的仪器，这两个仪器将集成在一个3D打印系统中：一个用于非接触式表征弹性性能；第二个用于测量凝胶或凝胶/细胞混合物的氧气水平和温度。这个想法是为了探索3D打印的潜力，以产生医疗和临床应用的含有细胞的结构。临床上对易于恢复、修复或再生身体功能和组织的结构和支架的迫切需求充分证明了这项研究的合理性。用于伤口愈合的扁平薄膜、用于3D建模的圆柱形支架、用于新的个性化药物开发的病理生理功能、用于牙科植入物的主动涂层、用于设备和手术工具的抗菌表面、用于测试新的肿瘤学程序的含有癌细胞的水凝胶模型，以及其他临床应用将大大受益于具有定制梯度的新型3D打印结构的开发。这将允许为每一类疾病患者开发个性化设备，并根据患者的病理和设想的临床治疗而定。所要求的仪器将满足拟议团队成员开发各种材料和表面的大部分材料和表面，从生物材料和医疗设备(用于疾病组织和器官的再生、替换、重建和临床前测试)到工业产品(抗菌剂等)，仅举几例。这将有力地帮助拟议的团队以竞争性的方式展示他们在健康材料方面的基础研究工作的价值。预计该基础设施将促进将其发现研究成果应用于创新，从而对研究成果进行评估，并探索成为造福于社会的真正产品的潜力。

Advanced materials, showing unconventional and extreme properties are becoming the key factors for generating and pushing innovation in a number of fields, including biomedical, industrial, chemical, mechanical, pharmaceutical, and optical thus guaranteeing competitiveness and impacting the economic growth. One of the most recent, versatile and high-potential material processing techniques is without any doubt additive manufacturing. 3D Printing or 3D Bio-printing of polymeric gels or blends of polymeric gels and cells constitute two innovative routes for fabricating specimens with tailored composition making possible to generate compositional gradients of cells into the same specimens. With this technique, it is potentially possible to confer new features such as higher resistance or biological attractiveness towards selected cells, to a wide range of substrates, in a non-homogenous way and across the specimen geometry. The equipment that we propose to acquire through this NSERC RTI proposal includes two easy-to-use instruments that will be integrated in one 3D printing system: one enabling the non-contact characterization of the elastic properties; the second one for measuring the level of oxygen and the temperature of gels or gels/cell blends. The idea is to explore the potential of 3D-printing for generating cell-containing structures for medical and clinical applications. The urgent clinical need for structures and scaffolds susceptible to restore, repair or regenerate body functions and tissue fully justify this research. Flat membranes for wound healing, cylindrical scaffolds for 3D modeling patho-physiological functions for new personalised drug development, proactive coatings for dental implants, antibacterial surfaces for devices and surgical tools, cancer cell-containing hydrogel phantoms for testing new oncological procedures, and other clinical applications will greatly benefit from the development of a new class of 3D-printed structures with tailored gradients. This will allow developing personalized devices for each class of diseased patient and depending from his/her pathology and envisaged clinical treatment. The requested instruments will meet most of the material development requirements of the members of the proposed team for the development of a wide variety of materials and surfaces spanning from biomaterials and medical devices (for the regeneration, replacement, reconstruction, and preclinical testing of diseased tissues and organs) to industrial products (antibacterial, others), to name only a few. This will strongly help the proposed team to competitively demonstrate the value of their fundamental research works on materials for health. The infrastructure is expected to facilitate the application of the of their discovery research results toward innovation thus valorizing the output of the researches and exploring the potential to become true products for the benefit of the Society.