Abstract

Creation of an open-source 3D bioprinter for living cells

Lea Pourchet, Manager, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1

In the past few years, the advances in 3D printing and especially in bioprinting, gave an excellent overview of what can be the future of the regenerative medicine. Scaffolds for tissues growing and other biomaterial applications were then largely covered by the developed technologies. Nevertheless, instruments and technologies being able to print directly living cells in real 3D format with hollow structures and multi-component composition are still very few. In our present approach, we had created an open source bioprinter on the basis of a 3D extrusion printer (TOBECA®, France), by substituting the extruders’ head with a rack of syringe pumps, enabling the bio-extrusion process. All parts of the new bioprinter were then printed using the initial PLA 3D printer, following the self-replication concept. All source code and design files are now open source available. Ink formulation optimization was carried on in order to permit living cell extrusion. An alginate based ink was selected, together with the additives necessary to the stabilization of the ink. The developed ink has a perfect biocompatibility, printability, ideal and a polymerization process adapted to the cell culture. We were thus able to print bi-component 3D hydrogels with high potential applications in the field of regenerative medicine and 3D organ model systems.