Ibrahim Ozbolat
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Lab-grown tissues could one day replace damaged bone or organs, but they need blood vessels to survive. Without a fast-forming blood supply, cells deep inside an engineered tissue die after implantation.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
bioprinting
3D printing
tissue engineering
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Test whether vascular micropuncture, making tiny needle holes in the sagittal sinus vein, speeds vascularization of skull defects in rats, measured with laser Doppler, angiography and immunohistochemistry.
- Use air-printed channels in 3D scaffolds to guide the direction of new vessel growth, and test whether micropuncture scales up in a sheep model.
- Determine whether sagittal sinus micropuncture vascularizes high-density bioprinted bone grafts made from bone-forming cell spheroids, assessed by micro-CT and histology.
- Develop 3D printing of air (3DAirP) to create stable open channels down to ~125 µm in yield-stress gels, and demonstrate it with vascularized bone and an atherosclerosis-on-a-chip model.
- Adapt 3DAirP for use during surgery in rat skull defects and hindlimbs, combined with microsurgery to induce and orient vessel growth.
- Develop high-throughput spheroid bioprinting to place many cell clusters at once on hydrogels, demonstrated by printing bone spheroids into rat skull and face bone defects during surgery.
- Reconfigure spheroid bioprinting for freeform placement in support baths such as alginate microgels, to build anatomically shaped human bronchopulmonary (lung) segments.
More about the research
This is a major reason tissue engineering has struggled to reach patients. These projects tackle that problem from several sides. Two develop new 3D printing methods: one prints air to create open channels for vessels, and one rapidly places clusters of living cells. A third pairs these printing methods with a new surgical technique that coaxes nearby vessels to grow into implants. Much of the work focuses on rebuilding bone in the skull and face.
Why it matters
Patients with skull and face injuries could benefit from bone grafts that develop a blood supply quickly and survive after implantation, improving on current reconstructive surgery. Faster ways to print vessel channels and cell-dense tissues could also help make larger engineered tissues and organ substitutes, such as lung segments. They could also yield lab models of diseases like atherosclerosis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Leveraging Microsurgery and Bioprinting for Rapidly Oriented Vascularized Tissue Engineering
NIH · Jun 2025 – May 2030
3D Printing of Air: An Intangible Ink for Fabrication of Vascularized Tissues
NIH · Jul 2024 – Apr 2028
High-throughput Spheroid Bioprinting Technology for Scalable Fabrication of Tissues
NIH · Jun 2023 – May 2027
Closest labs
Michael Mak
Stony Brook University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Develop biofabrication methods that tune the architecture of natural, unmodified collagen I across scales, from fiber networks to whole-tissue geometry, to build realistic engineered tissues and mini-organs.
Susmita Bose
Washington State University, WA·Biomedical Engineering
Determine how natural medicinal compounds such as curcumin, acemannan and vitamin D3 affect bone-forming activity of 3D-printed porous calcium phosphate and ceramic–polymer scaffolds in cell studies, including the needed doses and release rates.
Johnna Temenoff
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether attaching transactivator of transcription (TAT) peptides, which help cargo enter cells, to donor mitochondria increases their uptake and bone formation by precursor cells in culture.
The school
Pennsylvania State University: 60 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 743 research doctorates a year.
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