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As virtual reality (VR) has drastically evolved over the past few years, the field of applications of VR flourished way beyond the gaming industry. While commercial VR solutions might be available, there is a need to develop a workflow for specific applications. Bioprinting represents such an example. Here, complex 3D data is generated and needs to be visualized in the context of quality control. We demonstrate that the transfer to a commercially available VR software is possible by introducing an optimized workflow. In the present work, we developed a workflow for the visualization of the critical quality attribute (cQA) cell distribution in bioprinted (extrusion-based) samples in VR. The cQA cell distribution is directly influenced by the pre-processing step mixing of cell material in the bioink. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was used as an analytical tool to generate spatially resolved 2.5 and 3D data of the bioprinted objects. A sample with poor quality in respect of the cQA cell distribution was identified as its inhomogeneous cell distribution could be displayed spatially resolved in VR. The described workflow facilitates the usage of VR as a tool for quality inspection in the field of bioprinting and represents a powerful tool for visualization of complex 3D MRI data., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Gretzinger, Schmieg, Guthausen and Hubbuch.)

In biotechnology, immobilization of functional reactants is often done as a surface immobilization on small particles. Examples are chromatography columns and fixed-bed reactors. However, the available surface for immobilization is directly linked to particle diameter and bed porosity for these systems, leading to high backpressure for small particle sizes. When larger molecules, such as enzymes are immobilized, physical entrapment within porous materials like hydrogels is an alternative. An emerging technique for the production of geometrically structured, three-dimensional and scalable hollow bodies is 3D-printing. Different bioprinting methods are available to produce structures of the desired size, resolution and solids content. However, in case of entrapped enzymes mass transfer limitations often determine the achievable reactivities. With increasing complexity of the system, for example a fixed-bed reactor, 3D-simulation is indispensable to understand the local reaction conditions to be able to highlight the optimization potential. Based on experimental data, this manuscript shows the application of the dimensionless numbers effectiveness factor and Thiele modulus for the design of a 3D-printed flow-through reactor. Within the reactor, enzymes are physically entrapped in 3D-printed hydrogel lattices. The local reaction rate of the enzymes is directly dependent on the provided substrate amount at the site of reaction which is limited by the diffusion properties of the hydrogel matrix and the diffusion distance. All three parameters can be summed up by one key figure, the Thiele modulus, which, in short, quantifies mass transfer limitations of a catalytic system. Depending on the rate of the enzymatic reaction in correlation to the diffusional transport, mass transfer limitations will shift the optimum of the system, favoring slow enzyme kinetics and small diffusion distances. Comparison with the enzymatic reaction rate in solution yields the effectiveness factor of the system. As a result, the optimization potential of varying the 3D-printed geometries or the reaction rate within the experimentally available design space can be estimated., (Copyright © 2020 Schmieg, Nguyen and Franzreb.)

The development of process steps catalyzed by immobilized enzymes usually encompasses the screening of enzyme variants, as well as the optimization of immobilization protocols and process parameters. Direct immobilization of biocatalysts by physical entrapment into hydrogels can be applied to reduce the effort required for immobilization, as the enzyme-specific optimization of the immobilization procedure is omitted. Physical entrapment is applicable for purified enzymes as well as crude cell extracts. Therefore, it can be used to quickly assess and compare activities of immobilized enzymes. For the application in flow reactors, we developed 3D-printed hydrogel lattices for enzyme entrapment as well as matching housings, also manufactured by 3D-printing. Testing the resulting enzyme reactors for three different enzymes, namely alcohol dehydrogenase from Lactobacillus brevis , benzoylformate decarboxylase from Pseudomonas putida and β-galactosidase from Aspergillus oryzae , and four different enzymatic reactions showed the broad applicability of the approach but also its limitations. The activity of the immobilized biocatalysts was measured in batch experiments and compared to the kinetics of the respective free enzymes in solution. This comparison yields an effectiveness factor, which is a key figure to describe the extent the immobilized catalyst is effectively utilized. For the examined systems the effectiveness factor ranged between 6 and 14% and decreased with increasing absolute activity of the entrapped enzymes due to mass transfer limitations. To test the suitability of the hydrogel lattices for continuous operation, they were inserted into 3D-printed reactor housings and operated at constant flow. Stable product formation could be monitored over a period of 72 h for all four enzymatic systems, including two reactions with redox cofactor regeneration. Comparing calculated and experimental conversion in the continuous setup, higher values of the effectiveness factor in batch experiments also hint at good performance in continuous flow. This can be used to optimize complex biocatalytic reactions on a small scale.