Sunflower Pollen Used as 3D-Printable Bio-ink

At Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), a team of researchers has developed a new 3D-printable ink made from sunflower pollen. More environmentally friendly, durable, and affordable, this bio-ink could be used to manufacture parts for tissue engineering or drug delivery. One of the advantages of this pollen-based bio-ink is its ability to retain its shape once deposited on a bio-printer bed, making it easier to design the final product.

Bioprinting brings together all the techniques that make it possible to manufacture cellular structures with the same properties as natural tissues. Probably the most widely used process is extrusion: like an FDM printer, the bioprinter deposits the ink layer by layer, generally a hydrogel containing the cells. One of the biggest challenges with this technique is retaining the shape of this hydrogel. This is why printing media are needed: ink is traditionally deposited in a sort of matrix, which will be obsolete once the process is complete. Researchers at NTU Singapore, therefore, wanted to find an alternative that would no longer use a matrix and therefore minimize the waste associated with bioprinting.

The team behind this study (Photo Credit: NTU Singapore)

Professor Cho Nam-Joon, the co-lead author of the study, explains: “Bioprinting can be a challenge because the material that the inks are made of is usually too soft, which means the structure can collapse during the print. By adjusting the mechanical properties of sunflower pollen, we have developed a pollen-based hybrid ink that can be used to print structures with good structural integrity. This is a significant achievement because the process of making pollen ink is sustainable and affordable. Since there are many types of pollen species with distinct sizes, shapes, and surface properties, pollen microgel suspensions could potentially be used to create a new class of environmentally friendly 3D printing materials.”