3D bioprinting is one of the fastest growing fields in biomedicine. It is considered to have great potential for future tissue and organ replacement from the laboratory, as well as for organ-like in vitro models for preclinical drug development. Hydrogels are frequently used to generate such 3D models due to their structural similarity to the native extracellular matrix. Consequently, they provide good environmental conditions for the three-dimensional culture of living cells. However, biofunctional hydrogels show weaknesses in the context of 3D bioprinting, partly due to the static quasi-covalent cross-linking behavior of currently used hydrogels.

Therefore, my research focuses on novel hydrogel formulations that exhibit dynamic cross-linking behavior. Such self-healing hydrogels can also mimic biochemical interactions in naturally occurring tissues. The aim of my project is to explore 3D bioprinting processes and related hardware for processing the developed self-healing hydrogels into stable 3D constructs or tissue models. In the future, these could be used as biological demonstrators for drug and toxicity testing, which could significantly contribute to the reduction of animal testing.