Coaxial 3D Bioprinting of Alginate-Chitosan Interfacial Polyelectrolyte Complexation

吳億暄 Yi-Syuan Wu 1, Ming-Chia Li 1

1 Department of Biological Science and Technology, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University 

Peripheral nerve injury is very common and various. For extensive injuries, the most common treatment is autologous or allograft transplantation, but prone to infection, rejection, limited supply and other difficulties. Therefore, the development of neural scaffolds has become an alternative to repair.

Sodium alginate (SA) is widely used in the fields of biomedicine and pharmaceuticals because of its high biocompatibility, strong water absorption, and easy formation of hydrogel with cations. At the same time, chitosan (CHI) has low biological toxicity, biological degradability and other characteristics. The combination of their features can produce a functional complex fiber, that is, the interfacial polyelectrolyte complexation (IPC) through electrostatic interactions.

In this study, a shear thinning IPC complex was prepared by the SA and protonated CHI for a co-axial 3D printing. According to the characteristics of the IPC fiber, well-aligned anisotropic helical fibers can be observed by SEM. Also, the formation of preferred right-handed helical fiber at molecular scale can be further confirmed by electronic circular dichroism spectroscopy. This study will use the characteristics of rapid gelation of IPC complexes for the coaxial 3D printing to develop a functional bio-ink and nerve guidance conduit for nerve regeneration in near future.

Keywords：Interfacial polyelectrolyte complexation, Hydrogel, Coaxial 3D printing