Laser bioprinting techniques are emerging as an ideal tool for cell printing due to their excellent cell viability, close to 100%, and high spatial resolution. In this paper, we discuss a special adaptation of the Blister-Actuated Laser Induced Forward Transfer (BA-LIFT) technique for cell printing, performed at the Laser Center UPM. BA-LIFT is a well-known laser direct writing technique and has been used for biological material transfer before. However, in our case we use a thick polyimide layer (30 microns) for blister generation, which provides exceptional protection of the cells from the incoming laser beam. Due to the transparency of this material in the VIS range, we can implement both fluorescence and conventional vision systems coaxial with the laser path to identify the cells to be transferred, opening up the possibility of cell sorting and even cell survival tracking in both donor and acceptor substrates. Negative and positive selection of cells is possible with this setup, with the possibility of leaving the cells to be transferred completely unaltered in the case of negative selection. We present some recent applications of this technique developed in our laboratory, including single-cell isolation for single-cell sequencing in translational medical applications and current studies for applications in tissue engineering. In addition, we present a high-speed imaging study of the transfer process to discuss the dynamics of jet generation and cell deposition mechanisms in the acceptor substrate using our approach.
Keywords
- Blister Actuated Laser Induced Forward Transfer
- Laser Bioprinting
- Single Cell Isolation
- Tisuue Engineering