Abstract

Today, there are countless applications for thin film coatings and patterns made from novel biocompatible materials including medical implants, drug coatings, and bioelectronic interfacing. The implementation of these new material coatings and patterns is expected to improve both device capabilities and performance. Pulsed lasers have unique qualities that can be applied to process biomaterial thin films and they have proven to be an invaluable tool in tissue engineering research and development. At NRL, we have developed advanced laser-based processing technologies originally for the deposition of electronic materials, but are now being successfully used to produce biomaterial coatings and patterns including polymers, inorganic scaffolds, and living biomaterials. In particular, we have demonstrated all the elements necessary to fabricate novel 3-D tissue constructs using a new laser forward transfer process. Termed MAPLE DW, the CAD/CAM process can deposit engineered tissue constructs cell-by-cell in order to simulate native 3-D heterogeneously structured tissue. We have deposited by MAPLE DW patterns and layers of cultured mammalian cells including osteoblasts, myoblasts, neuroblasts, and pluripotent cells. Our preliminary work has shown that we don’t have to re-create the tissue construct with complete fidelity for once the cells adhere they begin to communicate and then they travel down evolution’s path to the guided self assembly of living matter. Powered by this breakthrough in biomaterial processing, we can now enhance understanding, development, and exploitation in the field of tissue engineering by the ability to group and order defined populations of cells and bio-scaffolding with unprecedented flexibility and precision. The goal of this project is to demonstrate specific biological function by engineering tissue constructs consisting of well-defined heterogeneous mammalian cell populations.

© 2005 Optical Society of America