- Overview
- Wet preparation equipment
- Microscopy
- Spectroscopy
- Chromatography (Separation)
- Chromatography (detection)
- Molecular Biology
- Cell culture
- Electrophysiology
- 3D Bioprinting
- Various methods
Bioprinting is a newly developed method to construct living tissues or even organs by outputting living cells layer-by-layer. The technology has not yet been implemented in medical applications, i.e. is still on an experimental level. Once the development reaches far enough, however, it will undoubtedly shape a new chapter in fields of medicine and biomedicine.
Bioprinting is a combination of cell-culturing and digital manufacturing. It begins with developing cellular building blocks — also called bio-ink — that will later form the target tissue. This is then applied to a surface layer by layer as in classical 3D printing, to create the desired form. Finally, the model is cultivated in conditions that allow the cells to flourish, form connections and produce the final tissue. Typically material is applied in two steps: the first bioprinter output are the cells which are put in place in very thin layers. As the second output the bioprinters fabricate a temporary, dissolvable, gel-like support structure.
The fundamental extrusion technology used in bioprinters is most often syringe based extrusion. Photocuring, blue light technology and piezoelectric nanoliter pipetting are also technologies that often supplement or replace syringe based extrusion.
Materials used in such technology are hydrogels, silicone, hydroxyapatite, titanium, chitosan, cellular hydrogels, bioink, osteoink, organioids, agarose, collagen, polyethylene glycol, gelatin, alginates etc.
There is a number of commercial machines of which the cost ranges from 10.000€ up to more than 200.000€. Most bioprinters were developed at universities and many were not commercially released. The devices are based on various other technologies including stereolitography-based technology or deposition technology. Resources for the latter machines are harder to find. The cheapest design up to date is the Inkredible by Cellink, which is available for 5-9000€.
Source: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/08/26/top-10-bioprinters/
The idea of Bioprinting is not very sophisticated per se, but the applications of it hold potential for high-tech tissue and implant engineering. The handling of cells that can be very delicate on the other hand, requires very exact conditions for fabrication. Therefore, bioprinters are not something one has lying around on a desk in every office, not even in every lab. We were sadly only been able to find one DIY bioprinter variant. It is built from a couple of old CD drives, an Arduino and an ink jet cartridge that had been emptied and the paint was replaced by E. coli cell fluid. The device is able to plot bacterial colonies in various geometric shapes, it is, however, not yet suitable for tissue engineering.
The DIY variant bioprinter surely is affordable (costs less than 150€). The critical part in bioprinting is that the cells need to survive during the process and cultivating eucaryotic cells (e.g. animal cells) is vastly more complex than E. coli. The nutrition, temperature, humidity and gas composition all need to be precisely controlled, to promote tissue or even organ development.
Some high-end devices also integrate other technologies, which allow exact replication of target organs, such as computer tomography. This adds even more complexity not just to the hardware, but also software requirements.
Bioprinters are very objective-oriented, meaning that the printing environment must be adaptable to the requirements of the material that is being printed. The multiple extruder technology must be applied when printing the support tissue. The temperature needs to be efficiently regulated. In the DIY lab the complicated part is to culture cells and of course, implementing the outputs to actual humans or other animals is another level entirely.