Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology allowed fast and cheap prototype fabrication in numerous segments of industry and it also became an increasingly versatile experimental platform in life sciences. Yet, general purpose software tools to control printer hardware are often suboptimal for bioprinting applications. Here we report a package of open source software tools that we developed specifically to meet bioprinting requirements: Machine movements can be (i) precisely specified using high level programming languages, and (ii) easily distributed across a batch of tissue culture dishes. To demonstrate the utility of the reported technique, we present custom fabricated, biocompatible 3D-printed plastic structures that can control cell spreading area or medium volume, and exhibit excellent optical properties even at 50 ul sample volumes. We expect our software tools to be helpful not only to manufacture customized in vitro experimental chambers, but for applications involving printing cells and extracellular matrices as well.
Highlights
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper, its Supporting Information files and the http://petriprinter.elte.hu website
Grankvist (University of Umea, Sweden). 3T3 cells were obtained from American Type Culture Collection (ATCC; CCL-92)
The protein-bound dye was dissolved in 10 mM Tris and the optical density of the sample was determined at 570 nm using a microplate reader (EL800, BioTec Instruments, Winooski, VT, USA)
Summary
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper, its Supporting Information files and the http://petriprinter.elte.hu website. A recent study describes bioprinting of three dimensional, cell-laden, vascularized tissues that exceed 1 cm in thickness [7]. These constructs could be perfused on a microfluidic chip for long time periods exceeding six weeks. 3D-printing technology allows a simple in-lab fabrication of channels and reservoirs in cell culture dishes—on a cruder scale than litography-based microfluidic chambers, but without requiring specialized equipment and at a fraction of the cost [12, 13]. Most importantly, bioengineering applications like cell printing or fabricating cell-scale environments often require welldefined, specialized motion patterns and an ability to reproduce it in parallel targets, like an array of culture dishes. We created a graphic user interface, PetriPrinter, which distributes the programmatically defined printer movements into several culture dishes organized in a grid pattern
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