Page 104 - IJB-9-6

International

Journal of Bioprinting

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Development of an affordable extrusion

3D bioprinter equipped with a temperature-
controlled printhead

Carlos Ezio Garciamendez-Mijares 1,2,3† , Gilberto Emilio Guerra-Alvarez 1,2† ,
Mónica Gabriela Sánchez-Salazar , Andrés García-Rubio 1,2,3 ,
1,4
Germán García-Martínez 1,2,3 , Anne-Sophie Mertgen ,
1,4
Carlos Fernando Ceballos-González , Edna Johana Bolivar-Monsalve ,
1,4
1,4
Yu Shrike Zhang , Grissel Trujillo-de Santiago 1,2,5 *, and Mario Moisés Alvarez 1,2,5 *
3
1 Centro de Biotecnología-FEMSA, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo León, México
2 Departamento de Ingeniería Mecatrónica y Eléctrica, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo
León, México
3 Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
Harvard Medical School, Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
4 Departamento de Bioingeniería, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo León, México
5 Research and Development Unit, Forma Foods, Monterrey, Nuevo León, México

† These authors contributed equally
to this work. Abstract
*Corresponding authors:
Mario Moisés Alvarez Bioprinters show great promise as enablers of regenerative medicine and other
(mario.alvarez@tec.mx) biomedical engineering applications. In this work, we present a flexible and cost-
Grissel Trujillo-de Santiago effective design for a do-it-yourself bioprinter capable of printing/bioprinting gelatin
(grissel@tec.mx) methacryloyl (GelMA) and Pluronic constructs at flow rates of 0.05–0.1 mL/min and
Citation: Garciamendez- effective resolutions of 500–700 µm. The most distinctive feature of this bioprinter is its
Mijares CE, Guerra-Alvarez GE, ability to control the rheology of bioinks simply by adjusting the extrusion temperature
Sánchez-Salazar MG, et al., 2023,
Development of an affordable during printing. This is achieved by circulating temperature-controlled water within
extrusion 3D bioprinter equipped the printhead, which is engineered as a single 3D-printed component consisting of
with a temperature-controlled a water-recirculation jacket surrounding the ink/bioink cartridge. The flexibility to
printhead. Int J Bioprint, 9(6): 0244.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.0244 circulate either warm or cold water allows the system to be adapted according to
the needs dictated by the bioink composition. Herein, we demonstrate the ability to
Received: October 31, 2022 control the printability of GelMA or Pluronic fibers by decreasing or increasing the
Accepted: December 22, 2022
Published Online: July 5, 2023 temperature, respectively, thereby regulating its viscosity. In addition, any commercial
needle with a Luer lock can be incorporated into the printhead, allowing the easy
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article fabrication of fibers of different diameters with a single printhead. We showed that
distributed under the terms of the our bioprinter is capable of printing simple 2D constructs with high fidelity (i.e., lines
Creative Commons Attribution of GelMA with a thickness of ~522 ± 36.83 µm can be printed at linear speeds of 100
License, permitting distribution −1
and reproduction in any medium, mm min ) and 3D constructs composed of as many as five layers of cell-laden 5%
provided the original work is GelMA. We also demonstrated that C2C12 cells bioprinted through needle tips (300
properly cited. µm in diameter) exhibit adequate post-printing viability (~90%), as well as spreading
Publisher’s Note: AccScience after 7 days of culture. The presentation of this bioprinter may contribute appreciably
Publishing remains neutral with to the expansion of bioprinter use due to its low overall cost of manufacture, flexibility
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional and open-source character, amenability to modification and adaptation for use with
affiliations. different 3D-printed printheads, and ability to bioprint using GelMA.

Volume 9 Issue 6 (2023) 96 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.0244