Diabetes, heart failure, and hepatic failure are diseases of enormous burden to Americans. The effective therapies for these often lethal diseases require the application of novel engineering concepts and technologies. Tissue engineering holds great promise for the treatment of these diseases. Using biodegradable scaffolds, cells are organized in close proximity to each other with a well-defined 3-dimensional (3D) space for the formation of new tissues. While a typical biological cell has a size of several microns, the interactions of cells with the environment occur at a nanoscale. Fabricating such scaffolds with micro- and nano-scale features has been a significant bottleneck for industrial scale production of tissues. The goal of this research is to develop a novel nanomanufacturing system, Hyperlens-Assisted Projection Stereolithography (HAPS), with a sub-50 nm resolution for the direct-write of 3D, heterogeneous biological scaffolds. The research tasks include: a) design and fabrication of the hyperlens by combining simulation with experiments, b) integration of the hyperlens with the projection stereolithography system, c) design and fabrication of complex tissue scaffolds, and d) studying the growth and phenotypical modulation of vascular endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells using the scaffolds.
If successful, this project will help to enhance the emerging US biomanufacturing industry for the production of vascular tissues, skins, bones, and other tissues and organs. The proposed HAPS technique will foster a giant step for scalable, continuous 3D nanomanufacturing of not only functional biomedical devices, but also 3D nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, and nanoenergy devices. Moreover, the results of this work will provide inspiring teaching materials and interesting laboratory projects. The proposed efforts of integrating research with education will offer undergraduates and graduate students increased exposure to nanomanufacturing. The proposed symposia and workshop will greatly enhance the impact of nanomanufacturing research.
