Peripheral nerve tissue requires appropriate biochemical and physical cues to guide the regeneration process after injury. Bioprinted peptide-conjugated sodium alginate (PCSA) scaffolds have the potential to provide physical and biochemical cues simultaneously. Such scaffolds need characterisation in terms of printability, mechanical stability, and biological performance to refine and improve application in nerve tissue regeneration. In this study, it was hypothesized that 3D scaffold printed with low concentrated multiple PCSA precursor would be supportive for axon outgrowth. Therefore, a 2% (w/v) alginate precursor was conjugated with either arginine-glycine-aspartate (RGD) or tyrosine-isoleucine-glycine-serine-arginine (YIGSR) peptides, or a mixture of RGD and YIGSR (1:2)…
Bioplotting is an emerging freeform scaffold fabrication technique useful for creating artificial tissue scaffolds containing living cells. Simultaneous maintenance of scaffold structural integrity and cell viability is a challenging task. In this article, we present strategies developed to bioplot alginate-based three-dimensional tissue scaffolds containing hyaluronic acid and living Schwann cells for potential use in peripheral nerve tissue engineering. The fabrication platform, upon which the scaffold is created, was coated with the polycation polyethylenimine to immobilize the first layer of the scaffold on the platform. Each layer was then dispensed into a bath containing calcium chloride to cross-link the alginate, polyvinyl…