The Jetbio bioprinting process grew out of two research awards, the Versus Arthritis Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre and the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacture in Medical Devices.

Since then further support from Versus Arthritis and EPSRC have helped with key applications and refining the technology. Over the past year, two further awards have supported the technology development:

  • Bioprinter Development for Clinical Regenerative Medicine Environments, funded by the EPSRC funding via the Henry Royce Industrial Collaboration Programme (Project ICP317), in collaboration with Newcastle and Cambridge Universities. This supported research which show that the ReJI bioprinting approach could be used in high humidity tissue culture hoods typical of those used in clinical regenerative medicine environments.
  • Novel Bioprinters for 3D In Vitro Models (3D-IV), funded by NC3Rs and in collaboration with the Universities of Newcastle, Bristol and Cambridge. This project provided funding to build three pre-production bioprinters and for a series of seminars to promote understanding of how bioprinting could be used to create complex in vitro models.

The research has led to a number of scientific publications explaining the technology and it’s application:

  1. Ribeiro, R; Pal, D; Ferreira-Duarte, A; Gentile, P; Benning, M; Dalgarno, K. “Reactive jet impingement bioprinting of high cell density gels for bone microtissue fabrication.” Biofabrication, 2018, doi: 10.1088/1758-5090/aaf625.
  2. Kotlarz M; Ferreira AM; Gentile P & Dalgarno K. Bioprinting of cell-laden hydrogels onto titanium alloy surfaces to produce a bioactive interface. Macromolecular Bioscience, 2022. doi: 10.1002/mabi.202200071.
  3. Kotlarz M, Ferreira AM, Gentile P, Russell SJ, Dalgarno K. Droplet-based bioprinting enables the fabrication of cell-hydrogel-microfibre composite tissue precursors. Bio-Design and Manufacture, 2022. doi: 10.1007/s42242-022-00192-5.
  4. Kotlarz M; Melo P; Ferreira AM; Gentile P & Dalgarno K. Cell seeding via bioprinted hydrogels supports cell migration into porous apatite-wollastonite bioceramic scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. Biomaterials Advances, 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.bioadv.2023.213532.
  5. Ruiz-Gutiérrez É, Hasslberger J, Klein M, Dalgarno K, & Chakraborty N. Analysis and optimisation of mixing in binary droplet collisions. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2023, doi: 10.1017/jfm.2023.749.
  6. Ruiz-Gutiérrez É, Hasslberger J, Klein M, Dalgarno K, Chakraborty, N. Binary Droplet Collisions in Bioprinting: Influence of Material Properties on Mixing and Repeatability. Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, 2024, doi: 10.1007/s10494-024-00606-7.
  7. Bowes A, Collins A, Oakley F, Gentile P, Ferreira AM, Dalgarno K. Bioprinted high cell density laminar scaffolds stimulate ECM production in osteochondral co-cultures. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2024, doi: 10.3390/ijms252011131.