Engineered nascent living human tissues with unit programmability
Source abstract
Abstract
Leveraging human cells as materials precursors is a promising approach for fabricating living materials with tissue-like functionalities and cellular programmability. Here we describe a set of cellular units with metabolically engineered glycoproteins that allow cells to tether together to function as macrotissue building blocks and bioeffectors. The generated human living materials, termed as Cellgels, can be rapidly assembled in a wide variety of programmable three-dimensional configurations with physiologically relevant cell densities (up to 108 cells per cm3), tunable mechanical properties and handleability. Cellgels inherit the ability of living cells to sense and respond to their environment, showing autonomous tissue-integrative behaviour, mechanical maturation, biological self-healing, biospecific adhesion and capacity to promote wound healing. These living features also enable the modular bottom-up assembly of multiscale constructs, which are reminiscent of human tissue interfaces with heterogeneous composition. This technology can potentially be extended to any human cell type, unlocking the possibility for fabricating living materials that harness the intrinsic biofunctionalities of biological systems.
Source: europepmc · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗
Research context
OpenAlex topics: 3D Printing in Biomedical Research · Biomedical and Engineering Education · Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
References (64)
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