abstract
- © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.3D bioprinting is an emerging technique employed for engineering complex structures that can be used for regenerative medicine. Extrusion of hydrogels through a nozzle has produced layer by layer designs towards engineering patterns. Despite the significant advances of these systems in the biomedical field, there are some inherent constraints to achieve higher resolutions without impacting the viability of the cells contained in the bioinks. Recently, there has been research on polymerization using light and photosensitive materials that point toward finer details within more reproducible manufacturing conditions and more complex products. Recent advances in bioprinting include the implementation of the construction of multimaterial structures to mimic in a more precise way a complex tissue. This paper showcases the development of a novel design using a retrofitting strategy toward a Material Efficient and Low-Cost Bioprinting system based on a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technique that reduces the required materials with a low-volume material reservoir and optimizes the processing parameters. Towards a new generation of devices, we present a novel open-source retrofitting kit for adapting a low-cost commercially available Anycubic 3D printer to process a bioink. As a proof-of-concept, an initial study of the concentration of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMa) and Lithium Phenyl-2,4, 6 - trimethylbenzoylphosphinate (LAP) photoinitiator and the manufacturability is hereby presented for hexagonal, circular, and square features. The design of a new setup enabled a reduction of 90% of the required bioink. While further research is required to validate this concept, this is a step towards a new generation of affordable bioprinting systems.