Programmable liquid patterning device for skin culture and research

• Main Author: Soetarto, Andrew Darren
• Other Authors: Marcos
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Fibrin
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/176800
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Skin grafting is a process that transfers skin from one part of the body to another part that has lost the protective covering of skin. This process is commonly used to treat third-degree burns. Before skin grafting can be performed, new skin needs to be created. One of the main components of skin graft preparation is scaffold creation to facilitate the growth of skin cells. Fibrin has been proven to have numerous advantages as scaffold for skin grafting. The conventional way to prepare fibrin scaffold is to manually extrude fibrin using a double syringe system in a zig-zag pattern along a flat surface. This Final Year Project (FYP) is a continuation of a previous FYP. A compact machine was assembled in the previous FYP to automate the process of dispensing liquid onto a 10 x 10 cm2 square petri dish. However, due to time and cost limitations in the previous project, deposition of fibrin onto a petri dish was not done. In this FYP, optimizations and machine functions creation were done. A framework was created to calibrate the machine with different liquids through various tests. These tests are used to determine the essential dispensing parameters: bed speed, extrude width, and extruder speed. The machine is capable of producing an even surface of both water and agar on the square petri dish using less than 5 mL of liquid. Afterwards, experiments were done to determine the optimal machine parameters to produce an even fibrin scaffold. Multiple experiments were conducted using fibrin. Experiments were done to determine the values of the three dispensing parameters for fibrin. The scaffold sheets produced in the tests were not uniform, leaving few gaps. The effects of the dispensing parameters on fibrin were discussed. Finally, the petri dish was treated with plasma cleaner to change the surface of the dish from hydrophobic to hydrophilic to promote better adhesion of fibrin onto the surface. This showed promising results as it induced line-to-line self-assembly of fibrin, even though there were errors. Lastly, limitations and future works are discussed.