Evaluation of the Angiogenic Effect of Elastin Incorporation on Silk Fibroin 3D Printed Scaffolds

INTRODUCTION: A novel enzymatically
crosslinkable silk fibroin (SF) bioink has been
developed for printing high-resolution
reproducible 3D structures [1]. The
potentiality/versatility of SF bioinks to be
combined with different biomolecules for better
mimicking native tissues has been recently
investigated by introducing elastin for replicating
the outer intervertebral disc [2]. In this work, the
effect of elastin on the angiogenic response of SF
bioprinted scaffolds was explored by using the
chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay [3].