Visible Light-based Stereolithography Bioprinting of Cell-adhesive Gelatin Hydrogels

Stereolithography-based bioprinting offers advantages in resolution and rapid printing time, and thus has received major attention in recent years. However, traditional stereolithography-based bioprinting utilizes an ultraviolet light which may cause mutagenesis and carcinogenesis of cells. In this paper, we present a new visible light crosslinkable bioink that is based on cell-adhesive gelatin. The bioink consists of Eosin Y (EY) based photoinitiator and gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) pre-polymer solution. We examined the feasibility of using visible light from a commercial beam projector to pattern the EY-GelMA bioink. We measured the absorbance of bioink to characterize its sensitivity to visible light and performed bioprinting to test its ability to promote cell adhesion. It is found that the EY-GelMA bioink has an absorption peak at roughly 522 nm, and that it can be successfully crosslinked by visible light from the commercial projector. We performed the bioprinting experiments and visualized the cell morphology using nuclei/F-actin staining. Experimental results show that most of the cells attached to the EY-GelMA bioink after five days' culturing. Ultimately, the EY-GelMA bioink can support both visible light crosslinking and cell adhesion, offering great potential in bioprinting and tissue engineering.