Printability of thiol-ene photoclick initiated bioinks

Bioprinting is an innovative method for creating 3D cell-laden structures. However, the following two important factors should be observed in bioinks to be applicable in 3D bioprinters: the first requirement is that they should be cytocompatible, and the second one is that they should be printable. Here, we presented a printable bioink based on thiol-modified carboxymethyl chitosan (TCMCh) and polyethylene glycol dimethacrylate that can undergo a photo-click reaction without using any photoinitiators. Due to their fast, cytocompatible, and quite often orthogonal reactivity, thiol-ene click chemistries have been employed extensively in biomaterials applications, including drug delivery, tissue engineering, and controlled cell culture. To study printability, we made a printability map. Furthermore, we evaluated different concentrations of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) as a rheology modifier which was printed with different flowrates.