INVESTIGATING THE 3D PRINTING PIPELINE AND STRATEGIES TO FACILITATE THE TREATMENT OF BURNS

Abstract

Burns are a common injury that can lead to severe complications if not treated properly. With the emergence of 3D printing, the fabrication of cellular constructs (i.e., skin grafts) and acellular constructs (i.e., wound dressings) can improve current treatment protocols for burns. This thesis covers ways the 3D printing pipeline for the fabrication of cellular constructs can be improved and how the strengths of 3D printing can be leveraged to fabricate wound dressings that can effectively facilitate the treatment of burns. For cellular constructs, the use of a Taylor-Couette bioreactor was explored to improve the post-processing aspect of bioprinted dermal constructs. For wound dressings, two different wound dressing systems were explored along with the ability of 3D printing to fabricate complex scalable architectures that provide tuneable drug loadings and release profiles. The use of Computational Fluid Dynamics for parameter exploration of the 3D printing of wound dressings was also investigated.