Light-based 3D printing simplifies the production of organ-on-a-chip systems

Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have introduced a new light-based 3D printing process designed to accelerate the fabrication of so-called organ-on-a-chip systems. These microfluidic components serve as artificial tissue models for testing drugs and therapies under realistic conditions, without relying on animal testing or clinical trials. The approach primarily addresses a central challenge in tissue engineering: replicating dense networks of microchannels that correspond to capillaries in the human body.

“The human body has about 37 trillion cells, and nearly every one must be close to a capillary to survive,” says Dr. Anthony Convertine, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “Re-creating those dense microcapillary networks is a major engineering challenge for tissue engineering, but our work offers a path toward overcoming that barrier.”

“Point-by-point fabrication works, but it becomes slow and expensive when you try to create the intricate networks of tiny channels that living tissues rely on,” he says. “Our approach uses a light-curable, self-assembling resin that forms sacrificial structures. After printing, we dissolve those structures to leave clean, precise microchannels. It is faster, simpler and easier to scale.”

Instead, the new process relies on a photopolymerizable resin formulation that self-organizes during the exposure process. This creates temporary, sacrificial structures that are selectively dissolved after printing. What remains are clean, precise microchannels inside the chip.

“It is incredibly gratifying to see these three related papers, each building on the last, reach this level of visibility,” Convertine says. “It shows how far our work has progressed and signals even larger advances ahead for 3D-printed materials in tissue engineering.”

Another aspect is the so-called one-pot process, in which multiple functional components are combined within a single resin system. This reduces post-processing and enables laboratories to prototype new designs more quickly. The results were published as a cover article in the scientific journal Biomaterials Science and build on earlier work on polymerization-induced self-organization and solvent-free resins.

Overall, the research demonstrates how light-based 3D printing can be specifically advanced for biomedical applications. For organ-on-a-chip technology, this could represent an important step toward reproducible, finely structured models for drug discovery.