Screening formulations for new 3D printed wound healing materials

A new study investigates a fast, simple and cost-effective new platform for evaluating the impact of adding growth factors to formulations intended for innovative 3D-printed wound healing materials.

Researchers working in the field of regenerative medicine are applying the ever-increasing knowledge of the biological processes involved in tissue repair to develop new and improved wound healing solutions.

Many are currently focused on 3D printing and bio-printing technologies, which work by patterning biomaterials, biomolecules and/or cells to create materials that mimic the complexity of skin tissues and help promote the body’s natural wound healing processes.

Growth factors – including epidermal growth factor (EGF), fibroblast growth factor (FGF) and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) – are intrinsically involved in orchestrating several aspects of these processes.

So, incorporating these molecules into new wound dressings is a logical step to improve their healing potential. But as these are expensive ingredients, strong A evidence is needed to prove that the benefits outweigh the costs.

A new film-based testing platform

In a new study, published in Applied Surface Science, a team of scientists explore the use of thin polysaccharide blend thin films to test the impact of including growth factors into formulations intended for 3D bio-printed wound healing materials. 1 The researchers created blended alginate/carboxymethyl cellulose-based thin films loaded with and without growth factors and evaluated several of their properties at a nano-level. They analysed film formation using ATR-IR spectroscopy, evaluated their surface morphology and topography by atomic force and scanning electron microscopies. They determined their hydrophilicity using the water contact angle measurement method. Their results showed that adding growth factors into the blend films did not affect their formation or morphology, while their hydrophilicity was even slightly enhanced. The team next set out to evaluate the function and influence of the blend films on potential wound care applications in cultured human skin cell experiments. They found that the growth factors boosted cell viability. formulations for 3D bio-printing or other wound care solutions. Although further studies will be necessary to project the performance determined using the thin films to 3D-printed growth factor-loaded wound dressings, this approach shows great promise for a robust way to evaluate and refine new formulations for use in wound healing.

This is promising for both their own potential for use in wound healing as well as their application as testing platforms to find suitable materials for other types of woundcare products, such as 3D bio-printed materials. They used ultrapure water prepared from an Elga Purelab laboratory water purification system for the preparation of all their solutions, minimising the risk of introducing contaminants that could affect the results of their experiments.

Cost-effective, simple and quick

These encouraging results suggest that these blended thin films may represent a simple, yet systematic and representative platform that can reduce costs and speed up the development of novel growth factor-loaded

Author: Dr Alison Halliday

Reference: 1. Maver, U. et. al. Impact of growth factors on wound healing in polysaccharide blend thin films. Applied Surface Science; 2019: 485-49.

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