With the ability to manipulate cells temporarily and spatially into three-dimensional (3D) tissue-like construct, 3D bioprinting technology was used in many studies to facilitate the recreation of complex cell niche and/or to better understand the regulation of stem cell proliferation and differentiation by cellular microenvironment factors. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have the capacity to differentiate into any specialized cell type of the animal body, generally via the formation of embryoid body (EB), which mimics the early stages of embryogenesis. In this study, extrusion-based 3D bioprinting technology was utilized for biofabricating ESCs into 3D cell-laden construct. The influence of 3D printing parameters on ESC viability, proliferation, maintenance of pluripotency and the rule of EB formation was systematically studied in this work. Results demonstrated that ESCs were successfully printed with hydrogel into 3D macroporous construct. Upon process optimization, about 90% ESCs remained alive after the process of bioprinting and cell-laden construct formation. ESCs continued proliferating into spheroid EBs in the hydrogel construct, while retaining the protein expression and gene expression of pluripotent markers, like octamer binding transcription factor 4, stage specific embryonic antigen 1 and Nanog. In this novel technology, EBs were formed through cell proliferation instead of aggregation, and the quantity of EBs was tuned by the initial cell density in the 3D bioprinting process. This study introduces the 3D bioprinting of ESCs into a 3D cell-laden hydrogel construct for the first time and showed the production of uniform, pluripotent, high-throughput and size-controllable EBs, which indicated strong potential in ESC large scale expansion, stem cell regulation and fabrication of tissue-like structure and drug screening studies.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 62. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 November 2015.
All research outputs
#825,735
of 31,978,644 outputs
Outputs from Biofabrication
#39
of 944 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#9,820
of 311,916 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biofabrication
#3
of 12 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 31,978,644 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 944 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 311,916 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 12 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its contemporaries.
