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Metallic Vessel with Mesh Culture Surface Fabricated Using Three-dimensional Printing Engineers Tissue Culture Environment

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Abstract

Various culture devices have been developed as fundamental technologies for facilitating bioengineering studies. Culture devices are designed to prepare specific culture environments. Thus, both macrostructures and surface micromorphology should be considered in the device design. Although fabricating devices with elaborate designs incurs high production costs, disposable materials are typically used for culture devices. However, some metallic materials are strong, stable, and biocompatible. Bioengineers have not applied these materials to culture devices because of the difficulty of processing. An emerging technology using three-dimensional (3D) printing has been developed, which can produce complex designs using metal. We demonstrate the applicability and potential of metal 3D printing for fabricating culture devices toward the development of the bioengineering discipline. As a specific example, we fabricated metallic culture devices where the environment of cultured tissues can be improved. One of the biggest factors determining the culture environment is active media supply. To attain active media supply to the tissue, devices having culture surfaces with mesh structures having holes far larger than cells were proposed. Cell sheets were cultured as tissue models, realizing tissue culture with such structures. The cultured tissue showed increased metabolism, indicating enhanced media supply owing to mesh surfaces. The biocompatibility of the 3D printed metal device was confirmed by viability assays on cultured cells, and reusability of the device was confirmed by mechanical and biochemical evaluations. We believe this study serves as a reference for using metallic 3D printing as an option for fabricating culture devices, which will promote bioengineering research.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (20J00337). The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Takahiro G. Yamada (Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University) for his assistance with the statistical analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Tokyo, 162-8666, Japan

    Chikahiro Imashiro, Takashi Morikura & Tatsuya Shimizu

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Kanagawa, 223-8522, Japan

    Takashi Morikura, Jun Komotori & Shogo Miyata

  3. Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, 162-8480, Japan

    Takashi Morikura

  4. School of Integrated Design Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, Kanagawa, 223-8522, Japan

    Motoaki Hayama

  5. Faculty of Engineering, Sanjo City University, Niigata, 955-0091, Japan

    Atsushi Ezura

  6. Department of Integrative Bioscience and Biomedical Engineering, Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, 162-8480, Japan

    Katsuhisa Sakaguchi

Authors
  1. Chikahiro Imashiro
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  2. Takashi Morikura
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  3. Motoaki Hayama
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  4. Atsushi Ezura
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  5. Jun Komotori
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  6. Shogo Miyata
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  7. Katsuhisa Sakaguchi
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  8. Tatsuya Shimizu
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Contributions

Conceptualization: CI, JK, and KS. Data Curation: CI, SM, AE, and TS. Formal Analysis: CI, TM, and MH. Funding Acquisition: CI. Investigation: CI, TM, MH, and AE. Methodology: CI and KS. Project Administration: KS and TS. Resources: JK, SM, KS, and TS. Supervision: KS and TS. Validation: TS. Visualization: CI, TM, MH, and AE. Writing - Original Draft Preparation: CI, TM, MH, and AE. Writing - Review & Editing: JK, SM, KS, and TS

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Katsuhisa Sakaguchi or Tatsuya Shimizu.

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T.S. is a stockholder of CellSeed, Inc. Tokyo Women’s Medical University received research funds from CellSeed, Inc.

Neither ethical approval nor informed consent was required for this study.

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Imashiro, C., Morikura, T., Hayama, M. et al. Metallic Vessel with Mesh Culture Surface Fabricated Using Three-dimensional Printing Engineers Tissue Culture Environment. Biotechnol Bioproc E 28, 181–191 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-022-0227-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-022-0227-1

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