In a move that slashes 90 percent of the cost of mass-producing metastatic microtumors and therapeutic microtissues for screening and research, Rice University bioengineers have adapted techniques from the “maker” movement to reprogram a commercial laser cutter to etch up to 50,000 tiny “microwells” per hour into sheets of silicone.
The fabrication technique, which was developed with open-source software and hardware, is described in a new study published in the journal RSC Advances.
To study micrometastases in the lab, researchers grow multicellular aggregates of tumor cells. Traditionally, scientists have formed these by manually placing individual droplets of cells onto a plate using a pipette. But Miller said this method is labor-intensive, highly variable and typically produces small numbers of usable samples, which makes it impractical for studies that may require thousands of aggregates.
“Recent studies have revealed that cancer patients can have microtumors throughout their bodies,” Miller said. “Most of these remain dormant, but some will actually grow into a full-blown tumor that can threaten the patient. We don’t know exactly how the environmental conditions around a microtumor can promote or suppress this dangerous transition, but one way to investigate this process is with screening studies that involve large numbers of aggregates placed into defined environments.”
One method for making many multicellular aggregates at once is to place cells onto a test plate containing several thousand microscopic wells, or microwells. Although commercial microwell products are on the market, Miller said they can be expensive, and the wells also come in a limited selection of shapes and sizes, which can make it difficult to produce small aggregates.
Miller and graduate student Jacob Albritton, the lead author of the new study, found they could produce up to 50,000 microwells per hour by developing hardware and software modifications for a commercial CO2 laser cutter — the same kind of machine used to make trophies, jewelry, toys, acrylic figurines and other commercial products.
“We found we could create a conical well with a millisecond laser pulse in a sheet of poly(dimethylsiloxane), or PDMS,” Albritton said. The material is a silicone-based organic polymer that’s commonly used in industrial fabrication. This polymer is also nontoxic to living cells and is used often in biological experiments.
“When the laser flashes across the surface, it’s like a Gatling gun, and you can see little spouts of flame from each strike,” Albritton said. “Our laser-based fabrication method can achieve something that standard lithography cannot: sharp, conical depressions that help guide the cells into a single aggregate.
Regarding production costs, Miller said, “Using our technique, it costs around $30 to fabricate 100,000 microwells. This is less than one-tenth the cost of commercial sources.”
Read more: Open-source laser fabrication lowers costs for cancer research
The Latest on: Open-source laser fabrication
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Open-source laser fabrication” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Open-source laser fabrication
- open sourceon November 19, 2023 at 4:00 pm
AI startup Hugging Face offers a wide range of data science hosting and development tools, including a GitHub-like portal for AI code repositories, models and datasets, as well as web dashboards to de ...
- Top 5 Best Open Source LLMs in 2023on November 11, 2023 at 4:00 pm
There are many LLMs available in the market, both proprietary and open source. Open source LLMs are becoming increasingly popular due to their flexibility, customizability, and affordability.
- 8 ways to fix open source fundingon November 7, 2023 at 2:00 am
For all the successes of open source, developers are painfully aware of where the model starts to break down. What happens when the de facto lead developer gets tired of doing all the work ...
- Open source is still the future of enterprise ITon November 6, 2023 at 1:59 am
Last month it became the CNCF’s first graduating project in the cloud-native networking category, and it is also currently the third most active open source community in the CNCF, behind only ...
- Why Every Company Should Be Open-Source Alignedon October 25, 2023 at 3:15 am
You'll be asked to sign into your Forbes account. Open-source software has fueled innovation for decades, providing the building blocks for the internet and the modern cloud. Today, I believe that ...
- Open Sourceon November 11, 2022 at 12:31 pm
However, it’s not necessary to believe our claims or to trust someone else’s assessment. To ensure full transparency, the Threema apps are open source. On this subsite, developers and security ...
- Open source is a community, not a brandon June 6, 2021 at 5:00 pm
Value stream management involves people in the organization to examine workflows and other processes to ensure they are deriving the maximum value from their efforts while eliminating waste — of ...
- opensource laser softwareon January 25, 2016 at 4:00 pm
Laser cutters are fantastic pieces of equipment, and thanks to open-source improvements in recent years, are getting even cheaper to make. It can be as simple as throwing a high-powered laser ...
- Open Source Laser Cutter (v2)on March 1, 2011 at 11:35 pm
The Buildlog.net 2.x Laser is a second generation open source laser cutter that definitely improves the design of the first model. The 2 axis machine (optional vertical axis is manual or an ...
via Bing News