Hack an inkjet printer for 3D bioprinting: construct 3D printer to generate tissues in vitro

Leads: Venkata Ravuri, Simon Frid, James Cortese
Participants: Patrik D'haeseleer, Aaron Vollrath, Raghuvir Sengupta, Gregory Costanza, Ari, Serban Ciotlos, Jessabella, Coila, Gerald Witters, Eri Gentry, Kevin Bjorke, Michael Scroggins, Vineeth, Jing Luo, Cameron Clarke, Jonathan Reyles (+non-locals: Bryan Bishop, Lee Nelson, Elizabeth Amaral)

Weekly Meetup Time: We're meeting at BioCurious on Thursday, 7:30 pm

Also make sure to sign up for the mailing list if you want to stay informed:

https://groups.google.com/group/biocurious-printer-hacking

If you take any cool pics, please add them to the Flickr Pool

Things to do:

Organizational:

• Brainstorm a cool "end goal" project we can work towards
• What do we want to contribute for Maker Faire?

Inkjet:

• Contact HP or other e-Recycling for old HP 500 inkjet model (+ cartridges!)
• Test print with E. coli on paper
• Maybe get a 2nd inkjet, because we'll need to keep one in the wetlab 
• Take out paper handling system, so we can print on other surfaces
• Take careful disassembly pics, so we can put the paper handling hardware back in if we want 

HackteriaBot:

• Continue disassembling CD drives for stepper motors
• Build frame (lasercut?) to position X-Y drives
• Learn how to drive stepper motors from Arduino

DIY Syringe Pumps

BioPrinter Mark I - Inkjet!

BioPrinter Mark II - HackteriaBot!

Useful Bioprinter References

Cartridge Info and Links

We can start simple for this, in 2D: printing sugars, antibiotics, or inducers for a GFP strain on a Petri dish. Move up to printing 3D structures in gelatin, agarose, or collagen. Test if we can print live bacterial cells, and eventually human cells (once we have BSL-2).

Can print collagen or other substrates as a 3D matrix for tissues, organs; or maybe very simple organisms like seaweed or jellyfish?(that'd be a first)
Can print cells onto a surface; possibly cells + matrix
3D printed microfluidics channels?

Some links:
http://www.jove.com/video/3681/creating-transient-cell-membrane-pores-using-a-standard-inkjet-printer

http://hackaday.com/2011/07/12/re-manufacturing-inkjet-cartridges-for-3d-printing/
http://boingboing.net/2010/07/24/turn-an-inkjet-into.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ntd-organ-manufacturing
Making Medical Miracles with Inkjet Printers

http://blog.united-academics.org/2865/researchers-use-a-3d-printer-to-make-bone-like-material/
http://www.igb.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/igb/en/documents/PB_biorap_e.pdf
http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/artificial-blood-cells-3d-printing-fraunhofer-2259/
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/need-artery-just-print-one-out
http://www.economist.com/node/15543683
http://singularityhub.com/2009/06/15/organovo-pioneers-3-d-organ-printing/
http://openwetware.org/wiki/DIYbio/FAQ/Projects#Inkjet_Printer_Hacking_for_Bio_Projects
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/artificial-organs-could-arise-flash-electricity

http://www.explainingthefuture.com/bioprinting.html

(Jing)What I mentioned earlier, potentially better than starch due to faster decomposition time->
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/new-gel-glue-method-rejoins-cut-blood-vessels-better-stitches

Comments:
I have two unused coupons for techshop classes. I’d love to apply them to this type of project. I also have a suite of Autodesk 3D software at my disposal. -Ryan Huber

I have an old HP inkjet printer sitting in my hallway that I'd love to donate to a good cause. - Patrik

Mmm....

Although at first it seemed like a daunting task to accomplish, (not to show this is exactly what we should do) but that it's possible and may actually be pretty simple to start tinkering with this. First: Epson piezoelectric printers basically work by using a using a vibrating metal plate to shoot ink at the paper [thermal inkjet printers are far more common, and have been used successfully for printing cells, with minimal heat shock protein expression - see http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1239894674/Cui_clemson_0050D_10011.pdf - Patrik (Thanks Patrik! I'll look into this)], so all we need to do is clean out the cartridges and load what we want (although hopefully it doesn't need positive pressure to continuously feed "ink" or kill the cells with the force). Also in regards to used printers, if it's a fixed head design it might be harder to completely clean out the dried ink, but if it's replaceable than we would just need to buy new cartridges. First test is to see if we can clean out the cartridges, load new stuff (food dye) and see if it can still print. If that succeeds, then we would load yeast cells, print on some paper(or whatever medium), and try reculturing the yeast from the paper in the incubator. If it survives it'd be fairly easy to tell, because it bubbles CO2 or we could try with GFP E. coli.

Then software wise, I think we don't need special software yet... Printers usually print a ~.5cm swath across the paper. So if black cartridge was loaded with "cells" and color was loaded with "matrix", by printing small objects on separate doc files the printer would go thru one pass for each layer. We would then lower the printing stage, by removing a piece of paper underneath the stage after each pass. Here's an example of what we would print based on this idea:

Doc1:

o

Doc2:

0

Doc3:

o

We are using an HP DeskJet 5150 (c8962A)

http://www.partshere.com/hppartslist/hpparts.asp?part=C8962A

The drivers can be obtained from this link:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=304431

In the end, we would have black, cyan, magenta, yellow at our disposal and gradations of color could be used to control concentration. So once we see that we have a suitable setup with what we load into the cartridges, we can automate more. For instance, by combining all docs into one and spacing them away from each other vertically, the printer software would automatically print one layer per pass and the stage could be set to slowly lower at fixed rate (although this is still constrained by width). At this point we would probably would need software written and a more custom setup where the printer heads move (X, Y) and the stage just lowers (Z), but it would be justified.