tbaltazar

It’s round and 2cm in diameter when we do in vivo studies in mice. But with the printer we can potentially scale up and make any shape we want. The advantage is that we can create personalized shapes with different thicknesses to fit the wound site. You’re correct: in this study 3D printing is being used as a tool for high throughput production of skin tissue. This will be important to make this a cost-effective treatment. However, we are also working on the inclusion of hair follicles which require patterning and later self-assembly. Microvasculature in skin doesn’t really require patterning but higher caliber vessels in other organs, such as heart, will likely need it.

Hi everyone. I’m the first author of this paper. The full text should be available in the “just accepted” section of Tissue Engineering part A. It will come out later in print in a special issue on “3D printing for tissue engineering”. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about it!