{"id":65313,"date":"2025-07-10T18:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/?p=65313"},"modified":"2025-07-10T14:22:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T12:22:40","slug":"bio-ink-lung-tissue-020720251","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/bio-ink-lung-tissue-020720251\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists in Canada are Developing a Bioink that Simulates Lung Tissue"},"content":{"rendered":"

3D bioprinting<\/a> continues to evolve as a promising tool in the field of personalized medicine. With this in mind, researchers at McMaster University in Ontario have developed a new bioink that mimics the mechanical and structural properties of lung tissue. In other words, this bioink enables the printing of tissues capable of contracting and \u201cbreathing,\u201d just like human lungs. At this stage, the main priority is to promote medical research and the development of treatments. However, in the longer term, scientists are considering clinical applications, including lung repair through transplantation or implantation in patients with COPD or fibrosis.<\/p>\n

Unlike other bioinks<\/a> that require low temperatures for printing and can often lose their shape after printing, this new material retains complex structures while remaining stable at body temperature. Financially supported by McMaster University in 2024, this project led to the creation of the startup Tessella Biosciences, which already has its first customers and is receiving positive feedback.<\/p>\n

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From left to right, David Gonz\u00e1lez Martinez and Jos\u00e9 Mor\u00e1n-Mirabal working with bioink for lung tissue (Photo credit: Georgia Kirkos, McMaster University)<\/p><\/div>\n

Why Develop a Bioink for Lung Tissue?<\/h2>\n

This project was born in response to a major constraint in respiratory disease research. Jeremy Hirota, Associate Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and co-founder of the start-up, was struggling to recreate realistic cellular environments, particularly for the study of conditions such as COPD and pulmonary fibrosis. \u201cLungs breathe. They open and close with every breath we take,\u201d <\/em>says Hirota, \u201cbut 95 to 99 per cent of the research we do in the lab is done on hard plastic dishes, whether it\u2019s a petri dish or a tissue culture plate. It doesn’t take a scientist to understand that this hard plastic is not what your lungs are.”<\/em><\/p>

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To overcome this limitation, Hirota teamed up with Jos\u00e9 Moran-Mirabal, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and David Gonzalez Martinez, a doctoral student. This interdisciplinary collaboration resulted in a bioink specially formulated to reproduce the elasticity and stretchability of lung tissue, thanks to its adapted composition and rheology. The researchers describe this bioink as a \u201cplug-and-play\u201d solution, compatible with currently available 3D bioprinters<\/a>. It allows complex three-dimensional structures to be produced in less than an hour, with high resolution. While it already shows promise for lung modeling and toxicity or drug response testing, the team is also considering future clinical applications. These include the manufacture of skin grafts for severe burn victims and functional fragments of lung tissue for repair or transplantation procedures. In the longer term, researchers are considering the possibility of biologically printing entire organs, a major ambition in the field of 3D bioprinting. However, they acknowledge that this goal still faces significant challenges, both scientific and regulatory.<\/p>\n

What do you think of the new bioink for lung tissue? Let us know in a comment below or on our\u00a0<\/span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Facebook<\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>Twitter<\/span><\/a>\u00a0pages! Don\u2019t forget to sign up for our free weekly\u00a0<\/span>newsletter here<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for the latest 3D printing news straight to your inbox!\u00a0<\/span>You can also find all our videos on our\u00a0<\/span>YouTube<\/span><\/a>\u00a0channel. Interested in more medical and dental 3D printing news? Visit our dedicated page\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

*Photo Credits: McMaster University<\/em><\/p>\n

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3D bioprinting continues to evolve as a promising tool in the field of personalized medicine. With this in mind, researchers at McMaster University in Ontario have developed a new bioink that mimics the mechanical and structural properties of lung tissue.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6118,"featured_media":65314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medical","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65351,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65313\/revisions\/65351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}