A bioprinted heart-on-a-chip with human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes for drug evaluation

Faulkner-Jones, A., Zamora, V., Hortigon-Vinagre, M. P., Wang, W., Ardron, M., Smith, G. L. and Shu, W. (2022) A bioprinted heart-on-a-chip with human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes for drug evaluation. Bioengineering, 9(1), 32. (doi: 10.3390/bioengineering9010032) (PMID:35049741) (PMCID:PMC8773426)

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Abstract

In this work, we show that valve-based bioprinting induces no measurable detrimental effects on human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs). The aim of the current study was three-fold: first, to assess the response of hiPSC-CMs to several hydrogel formulations by measuring electrophysiological function; second, to customise a new microvalve-based cell printing mechanism in order to deliver hiPSC-CMs suspensions, and third, to compare the traditional manual pipetting cell-culture method and cardiomyocytes dispensed with the bioprinter. To achieve the first and third objectives, iCell2 (Cellular Dynamics International) hiPSC-CMs were used. The effects of well-known drugs were tested on iCell2 cultured by manual pipetting and bioprinting. Despite the results showing that hydrogels and their cross-linkers significantly reduced the electrophysiological performance of the cells compared with those cultured on fibronectin, the bio-ink droplets containing a liquid suspension of live cardiomyocytes proved to be an alternative to standard manual handling and could reduce the number of cells required for drug testing, with no significant differences in drug-sensitivity between both approaches. These results provide a basis for the development of a novel bioprinter with nanolitre resolution to decrease the required number of cells and to automate the cell plating process.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:Victor Zamora is supported by the Government of Extremadura (Grant No. TA18014). The authors acknowledge the funding support from the EPSRC (Grant Nos: EP/M506837/1, EP/P511420/1), Innovate UK and NC3Rs (Advancing the development and application of non-animal technologies programme).
Keywords:Cell-printing, organs-on-a-chips, bio-ink, hydrogels, hiPSC-CMs, in vitro testing, drug screening.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Smith, Professor Godfrey
Creator Roles:
Smith, G. L.Conceptualization, Writing – review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition
Authors: Faulkner-Jones, A., Zamora, V., Hortigon-Vinagre, M. P., Wang, W., Ardron, M., Smith, G. L., and Shu, W.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health
Journal Name:Bioengineering
Publisher:MDPI
ISSN:2306-5354
ISSN (Online):2306-5354
Published Online:13 January 2022
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2022 The Authors
First Published:First published in Bioengineering 9(1): 32
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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