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

显示出非常规和极端特性的先进材料正在成为产生和推动许多领域创新的关键因素，包括生物医学，工业，化学，机械，制药和光学，从而保证竞争力并影响经济增长。毫无疑问，最新的、通用的和高潜力的材料加工技术之一是增材制造。聚合物凝胶或聚合物凝胶和细胞的共混物的3D打印或3D生物打印构成了用于制造具有定制组成的样本的两种创新路线，使得有可能在相同样本中产生细胞的组成梯度。利用这种技术，它有可能赋予新的功能，如更高的电阻或生物吸引力对选定的细胞，以广泛的基板，在一个非均匀的方式和整个试样的几何形状。我们建议通过NSERC RTI提案获得的设备包括两个易于使用的仪器，这些仪器将集成在一个3D打印系统中：一个能够对弹性特性进行非接触式表征;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。这个想法是探索3D打印的潜力，用于生成医疗和临床应用的含细胞结构。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临床需求充分证明了这项研究的合理性。用于伤口愈合的平膜、用于新型个性化药物开发的3D病理生理功能建模的圆柱形支架、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、用于测试新肿瘤学程序的含癌细胞的水凝胶体模以及其他临床应用将从一类具有定制梯度的新型3D打印结构的开发中受益匪浅。这将允许为每类患病患者开发个性化设备，并取决于他/她的病理和设想的临床治疗。所要求的手术工具将满足拟定团队成员的大部分材料开发要求，以开发从生物材料和医疗器械（用于病变组织和器官的再生、置换、重建和临床前试验）到工业产品（抗菌等）的各种材料和表面，仅举几例。这将有力地帮助拟议的团队有竞争力地展示他们在健康材料方面的基础研究工作的价值。该基础设施预计将促进其发现研究成果的应用，从而使研究成果增值，并探索成为真正产品的潜力，以造福社会。

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.