Series in
MICROSYSTEMS
edited by P. A. Besse,
J. Brugger,
M. Gijs,
R. S. Popovic,
Ph. Renaud
Vol. 28:
Kristopher A. Pataky
Stencil Lithography and Inkjet Printing as
New Tools for Life Sciences Research
2011. XIV, 172 p.; € 64,00. ISBN 3-86628-395-4
This thesis
manuscript describes the application of micro and nanotechnology to produce
three toolkits for life-sciences research. The first technique presented is
nanostencil lithography for patterning cellular adhesion sites with the
ultimate goal of studying mechanosensitive gene expression. Nanostencil
lithography is a shadow-mask micro and nanopatterning technique that was
adapted for patterning metal on silicone rubber (PDMS) in the course of this
work. Once a specific material contrast is present on the substrate, the
patterns can be chemically functionalized using highly selective surface
modification techniques. In this work, Au micro and nanopatterns were rendered
cell-adhesive by grafting a thiolated peptide (presenting an RGD moiety) to
their surfaces. The micro and nanopatters were used to study whether geometric
confinement could prevent a mammalian cell’s primary ‘focal contacts’ from
developing into mature ‘focal adhesions’. Au micro and nanopatters were
successfully created on PDMS, glass, and even polytetrafluoroethylene.
The second part of
this manuscript focuses on 3D bioprinting. Recently, 3D printing has received attention
as a possible means of assembling heterogeneous tissue mimetics and ultimately
entire organs. However, to date no one has shown true 3D printing of hydrogels
in a ‘block by block’ manner analogous to industrial rapid prototyping systems.
One of the main hurdles is the fact that printed hydrogels tend to show
complete spreading on other printed hydrogels (or, like spreads on like).
This work details how the material properties of a hydrogel system can be
optimized to obtain 3D hydrogel printing analogous to a rapid prototyping
system. It goes on to show that this optimized printing process enables the
fabrication of branched microvasculature - a previously undemonstrated but key
requirement in the engineering of bulk tissues and organs.
The final part of this
manuscript describes the creation of an X-ray microcollimator to study
subcellular and subnucleolar damage responses in cells. While many molecular
biologists use ionizing radiation (commonly from X-ray tubes) to induce damage
in cells, current X-ray microcollimators only work well with costly synchrotron
radiation sources. During the course of this thesis, an X-ray microcollimator
was developed that is compatible with conventional X-ray tube setups. The
device collimates 20 - 30 keV X-rays into irradiation stripes between 0.5 and
10 µm in diameter. Results with the microcollimator
show that it is effective in limiting X-ray damage to single sub-cellular and
sub-nucleolar stripe zones.
Keywords: BioMEMS,
biomaterials, nanopatterning, surface modification, ionizing radiation,
microcollimator, bioprinting, inkjet, hydrogels, tissue engineering, life
sciences.
Direkt bestellen bei / to order directly from: Hartung.Gorre@t-online.de
Hartung-Gorre
Verlag / D-78465 Konstanz / Germany
Telefon: +49 (0) 7533 97227 Telefax: +49 (0) 7533 97228
http://www.hartung-gorre.de eMail: verlag@hartung-gorre.de