A 3D Printable Tissue Adhesive

Tissue adhesive materials are promising alternatives to sutures and staples for joining tissues, sealing defects, and immobilizing implantable devices. However, existing adhesive glues and patches typically offer little tunability over their shapes and physical properties, limiting their ability to be used for diverse applications. Here, we introduce a new strategy for fabricating customized adhesive patches and implantable devices using a 3D printable tissue adhesive ink based on a poly(acrylic acid)-grafted polyurethane brush-like polymer. The material confers high adhesion performance by integrating toughness, flexibility, and stretchability of the polyurethane backbone with tissue bond-forming moieties in the poly(acrylic acid) chains. As a result, the printed tissue adhesive patches exhibit fast, conformable, strong, and stable adhesion with defect specificity. Coupled with multi-material 3D printing, the tissue adhesive can also be used to manufacture various implantable devices, such as bioelectronic and drug delivery patches. Through in vivo rat and ex vivo pig models, we demonstrate the biocompatibility and potential versatility of the 3D printable tissue adhesive platform.