This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: If you've ever created a snowflake by folding, cutting and unfolding a piece of paper, you've practiced the art of kirigami. Like origami, kirigami has inspired innovations far beyond the elementary school classroom, with applications ranging from deployable structures for spacecraft to semiconductors.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago's College of Engineering have employed kirigami strategies to generate complex shapes that mimic tissue forms found in the human body. Their work has implications for tissue engineering and wound healing. The paper, "A 4D Bio-Kirigami Strategy for Engineering Complex Tissue Curvatures," was published in Cell Biomaterials.
The authors included Kaelyn L. Gasvoda, Aixiang Ding, Zhangli Peng, Alexandria Sterenberg, Oju Jeon and Eben Alsberg. In recent years, researchers have been exploring the potential of kirigami in wearable technology, optics and a growing number of other areas.
Its techniques give flat, stiff materials new stretchability and flexibility characteristics. Materials can also be reshaped without their composition having to be changed. But kirigami's potential has not been readily explored in tissue engineering or with soft, gel‑like materials that can hold living cells, said Gasvoda, a 2024 UIC graduate.
She earned her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Mayo Clinic. In the laboratory of UIC professor Alsberg, which focuses on developing innovative strategies and technologies to repair and regenerate damaged or diseased tissues in the human body, Gasvoda, Ding and other members of the research team began fabricating constructs engineered to change their shapes over time. Through programmed shape transformations, these constructs can develop into tissue-like structures with precisely defined geometries without requiring additional manipulation by the researchers.
"That was exciting, but we wanted to push further—to create more complex shapes with controlled self‑patterning and bending. Our goal was to design structures where we could precisely guide how they form and transform," Gasvoda said. "Complex geometries are important in tissue engineering because human tissues have intricate, three-dimensional shapes that are closely linked to their functions," said Ding, a research associate professor.
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