A research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a new method for fabricating personalized gum tissue grafts using 3D bioprinting combined with artificial intelligence (AI). Led by Assistant Professor Gopu Sriram, the group presents an alternative to conventional techniques that require harvesting tissue from the patient’s own body. The new approach promises more precise customization, reduced invasiveness, and potentially better healing outcomes.
The process utilizes a specially formulated bioink that supports the growth of living cells while maintaining structural stability during printing. While traditional bioprinting often relies on manual fine-tuning of multiple parameters such as extrusion pressure, print speed, and temperature, the NUS team integrated machine learning to optimize these variables.
“To speed up the 3D bioprinting process, we integrated AI into our workflow to address this critical bottleneck,” said Professor Dean Ho, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, and co-corresponding author of the research paper. “This approach greatly streamlines the process by reducing the number of experiments needed to optimise the bioprinting parameters — from potentially thousands to just 25 combinations,” added Prof Ho, who is also Director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and N.1 Institute for Health (N.1) at NUS.
“Our study is among the first to specifically integrate 3D bioprinting and AI technologies for the biofabrication of customised oral soft tissue constructs,” said Asst Prof Sriram, who is also the Thrust Co-Lead of Dental and Craniofacial 3DP Applications at NUS Centre for Additive Manufacturing (AM.NUS). “3D bioprinting is by far more challenging than conventional 3D printing because it involves living cells, which introduce a host of complexities to the printing process.”
“This research demonstrates how AI and 3D bioprinting can converge to solve complex medical problems through precision medicine,” added Asst Prof Sriram. “By optimising tissue grafts for individual patients, we can reduce the invasiveness of dental procedures while ensuring better healing and recovery.”
The grafts produced through this method demonstrated a cell viability of over 90 percent immediately after printing and after an 18-day culture period. Histological analyses confirmed a biomimetic, multi-layered tissue structure resembling natural gum tissue, and structural integrity was maintained throughout the culture period.
“3D bioprinting allows us to create tissue grafts that precisely match the dimensions of a patient’s wounds, potentially reducing or eliminating the need to harvest tissue from the patient’s body,” said Asst Prof Sriram.
“This level of customisation minimises graft distortion and tension during wound closure, reducing the risk of complications, surgery time and discomfort to the patients.” said Dr Jacob Chew, a periodontist, co-investigator of the study, and Academic Fellow at NUS Faculty of Dentistry.
By precisely matching grafts to individual defects, healing outcomes can be improved and procedure times shortened. In the long term, the team plans to conduct in vivo studies to evaluate the integration of the grafts in oral environments. Insights from this research could also be extended to other tissue types, such as skin, to support scarless wound healing.
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