Design and Implementation of an Accessible 3D Bioprinter: Benchmarking the Performance of a Home-Made Bioprinter against a Professional Bioprinter

Abstract

The tremendous application potential of 3D bioprinting in the biomedical field is witnessed by the ever-increasing interest in this technology over the past few years. In particular, the possibility of obtaining 3D cellular models that mimic tissues with precision and reproducibility represents a definitive advance for in vitro studies dealing with the biological mechanisms of cell growth, death and proliferation and is at the basis of the responses of healthy and pathological tissues to drugs and therapies. However, the impact of 3D bioprinting on research is limited by the high costs of professional 3D bioprinters, which represent an obstacle to the widespread access and usability of this technology. In this work, we present a 3D bioprinter that was developed in-house by modifying a low-cost commercial 3D printer by replacing the default extruder used to print plastic filaments with a custom-made syringe extruder that is suitable for printing bioinks. The modifications made to the 3D printer include adjusting the size of the extruder to accommodate a 1 mL syringe and reducing the extruder’s size above the printer. To validate the performance of the home-made bioprinter, some main printing characteristics, the cell vitality and the possibility of bioprinting CAD-designed constructs were benchmarked against a renowned professional 3D bioprinter by RegenHu. According to our findings, our in-house 3D bioprinter was mostly successful in printing a complex glioblastoma tumor model with good performances, and it managed to maintain a cell viability that was comparable to that achieved by a professional bioprinter. This suggests that an accessible open-source 3D bioprinter could be a viable option for research and development (R&D) laboratories interested in pre-commercial 3D bioprinting advancements.