Background:The shortage of donor corneas is a severe global issue,and hence the development of corneal alternatives is imperative and urgent.Although attempts to produce artificial cornea substitutes by tissue enginee...Background:The shortage of donor corneas is a severe global issue,and hence the development of corneal alternatives is imperative and urgent.Although attempts to produce artificial cornea substitutes by tissue engineering have made some positive progress,many problems remain that hamper their clinical application worldwide.For example,the curvature of tissue-engineered cornea substitutes cannot be designed to fit the bulbus oculi of patients.Objective:To overcome these limitations,in this paper,we present a novel integrated three-dimensional(3 D) bioprintingbased cornea substitute fabrication strategy to realize design,customized fabrication,and evaluation of multi-layer hollow structures with complicated surfaces.Methods:The key rationale for this method is to combine digital light processing(DLP) and extrusion bioprinting into an integrated 3 D cornea bioprinting system.A designable and personalized corneal substitute was designed based on mathematical modelling and a computer tomography scan of a natural cornea.The printed corneal substitute was evaluated based on biomechanical analysis,weight,structural integrity,and fit.Results:The results revealed that the fabrication of high water content and highly transparent curved films with geometric features designed according to the natural human cornea can be achieved using a rapid,simple,and low-cost manufacturing process with a high repetition rate and quality.Conclusions:This study demonstrated the feasibility of customized design,analysis,and fabrication of a corneal substitute.The programmability of this method opens up the possibility of producing substitutes for other cornea-like shell structures with different scale and geometry features,such as the glomerulus,atrium,and oophoron.展开更多
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.51875518 and 51475419)the Key Research and Development Projects of Zhejiang Province(Nos.2017C01054 and2018C03062)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.2019FZA4002),China
文摘Background:The shortage of donor corneas is a severe global issue,and hence the development of corneal alternatives is imperative and urgent.Although attempts to produce artificial cornea substitutes by tissue engineering have made some positive progress,many problems remain that hamper their clinical application worldwide.For example,the curvature of tissue-engineered cornea substitutes cannot be designed to fit the bulbus oculi of patients.Objective:To overcome these limitations,in this paper,we present a novel integrated three-dimensional(3 D) bioprintingbased cornea substitute fabrication strategy to realize design,customized fabrication,and evaluation of multi-layer hollow structures with complicated surfaces.Methods:The key rationale for this method is to combine digital light processing(DLP) and extrusion bioprinting into an integrated 3 D cornea bioprinting system.A designable and personalized corneal substitute was designed based on mathematical modelling and a computer tomography scan of a natural cornea.The printed corneal substitute was evaluated based on biomechanical analysis,weight,structural integrity,and fit.Results:The results revealed that the fabrication of high water content and highly transparent curved films with geometric features designed according to the natural human cornea can be achieved using a rapid,simple,and low-cost manufacturing process with a high repetition rate and quality.Conclusions:This study demonstrated the feasibility of customized design,analysis,and fabrication of a corneal substitute.The programmability of this method opens up the possibility of producing substitutes for other cornea-like shell structures with different scale and geometry features,such as the glomerulus,atrium,and oophoron.
