Nanoink has announced Dip Pen Nanolithography (DPN), a method for the controlled deposition of hydrogels for applied bioscience and biotechnology research.
The new method allows the rapid prototyping of experiments on length scales of less than two microns, which opens new opportunities for researchers.
The deposition of biocompatible polymers onto a range of substrates offers the ability to understand the binding between cells and surfaces as well as exploring how arbitrary patterns affect cell morphology and behaviour.
While this is in the early stages of development, the potential for applications in tissue engineering, scaffolds, protein arrays and neuroscience make this a significant breakthrough.
Nanoink's process of DPN allows biocompatible polymers to function as simple DPN 'inks', enabling the direct deposition of nanoscale features of the polymer, either pure or mixed with some molecule, dye, protein or peptide.
Then, after deposition and depending on the specific polymer, a crosslinking step can be induced by UV, pH or simply heating; this transforms the deposited polymer into a nanoscale three-dimensional hydrogel network.
There are unique applications in cell motility studies, as it is now possible to pattern multiple hydrogels, each with a different cell binding protein or peptide, in a single parallel experiment.
The process can be controlled so that the chemical binding of the hydrogel is altered while retaining its size.
This helps to cut down on the unknowns in biomaterials engineering experiments and gives researchers the ability to answer many long-standing questions about scaffold/substrate and scaffold/cell binding.
This opens the way to rapid prototyping of different hydrogel combinations without changing the overall DPN deposition characteristics.
Extensive ink development is not required for this application, meaning it is ready to use.
The researcher just has to add the appropriate biomolecule to the hydrogel precursor and commence deposition.
As the deposition characteristics are determined by the gel, not the encapsulated biomolecules, the possibilities for this new application of DPN are huge.
