A LEGO 3D Bioprinter Could Make Biomedical Research More Accesible

Researchers at Cardiff University have made a LEGO 3D bioprinter that is capable of printing human tissue such as skin according to a study in Advanced Materials Technologies. The team has made their model open source and hope to have it adopted by biomedical researchers around the world and thus help advance research despite often limited financial resources. More specifically, they have outlined the exact methodology, a sharp contrast to most research which puts a premium on protecting intellectual property, to enable anyone to make this printer.

Bioprinting is not new, but the price of printers capable of producing human cells is a notable deterrent, often amounting to several hundred thousand euros, especially for research teams that do not have a large budget. Yet researchers need human tissue samples to study diseases and develop treatments. To counter this problem, a team of researchers in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences at Cardiff University has built a 3D bioprinter made entirely out of LEGO.

This is the first time that a machine built with LEGO has been able to print human tissue. LEGO bricks were chosen because they have the advantage of being accurate, versatile and inexpensive. Once completed, the researchers put their bioprinter to the test by printing human skin cells, specifically hydrogel droplets (a gel typically made of polymers in which the blowing agent is water) containing viable human skin cells. The bio-ink droplets are generated microfluidically and contain living keratinocyte-like skin cells. These structures lay the foundation for a three-dimensional artificial skin model.