Hydrogel 3D micromachining by cavitation-based non-ablative femtosecond laser patterning

Protein hydrogels are among the most promising scaffold materials to build medically relevant 3D in vitro tissue models. 3D tissue models will have important applications in fundamental biomedical research and in drug development.

However, it remains challenging to 3D pattern hydrogels and form complex 3D micro-vascular structures inside the hydrogel in a generic, scalable and fully cyto-compatible way.To address these limitations, our purpose is to develop a generic and scalable hydrogel 3D micromachining approach that is suitable for realizing hydrogel scaffolds with internal 3D microvascular systems.

We will achieve this by exploiting femtosecond-laser-induced cavitation to form 3D structures in the hydrogel, a method that has not been previously reported.

We will investigate the underlying physics of the hydrogel patterning mechanism and investigate the space of biomaterials for which this approach is applicable.

To explore the feasibility of 3D patterned hydrogel scaffolds in emerging organ-on-a-chip applications, we will study their utility for realizing complex vascularized 3D tissue models.Our team is uniquely positioned to address the project objectives, with extensive scientific expertise in femtosecond laser 3D micro-machining, complemented by the expertise on organ-on-a-chip technology of the co-PI.

If successful, the results of this project will advance drug development and personalized medicine, thereby having significant scientific and societal impact.