LEGO® in the lab: Constructing the building blocks of life

Dr Christopher Thomas, Dr Oliver Castell and Dr Sion Coulman have built a 3D bioprinter made entirely of LEGO® and aim to create affordable, scalable and reproducible biological material for research in their lab, and beyond.

Human tissue samples are needed for biomedical research all over the world. Rigorous testing on these samples means researchers can further their understanding of human disease and develop potential treatments to improve patient health. However, researchers are finding it increasingly challenging to acquire these tissue samples due to ethical and practical constraints.

In response, and with funding from The British Skin Foundation, a team of researchers at Cardiff School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences constructed a 3D bioprinter in their lab using LEGO® Mindstorms.

Watch this short video to meet the team that designed and engineered the world's first 3D LEGO® bioprinter and discover how it works:

Watch this video to hear why the 3D bioprinter was made and the impact it could have on biomedical research in labs worldwide.

What is the purpose of the printer?

Many scientists grow cells on plates to investigate how they function and interact with other cell types and to better understand or treat disease. But cells grown on plates are only viewed in two dimensions which doesn't represent their three-dimensional (3D) structure. This can limit biomedical research.

Turning to tech to create representative biological tissue structures isn’t a new phenomenon. From replica skin and bone to tracheal splints and heart tissue — name a body part and there’s a good chance a 3D printer, somewhere, can create it. But such technology has been prohibitively expensive and few labs have the budgets to invest in commercially available bioprinters. Many of these off-the-shelf devices also have rigid functionality which can limit their potential in the lab.

The Cardiff team set out to create an affordable bioprinter that could assist their research and be replicated in laboratories all over the world.

Why was LEGO® used as the construction material?

When the research team asked themselves how they could engineer a low-cost, technically proficient and scientifically robust bioprinter, the answer came in the form of one of the most basic construction tools on the market — LEGO®. That's because LEGO® is:

affordable
easy to keep sterile in the lab
versatile
standardised and manufactured with extremely high precision so anyone can reproduce the identical build over and over again with barely any detectable difference in the finished construction
familiar to students and researchers who may not have any engineering experience
readily available globally

What can the printer do?

The LEGO® 3D bioprinter currently prints hydrogel droplets which contain skin cells. These cells are printed in layers which replicate the complex three-dimensional architecture of human skin.

This is the first step in creating skin models for all kinds of research into the functioning of both healthy and diseased skin cells which could benefit patient's lives in the years to come.

What does the printer mean for future research?

Dr Castell, Dr Coulman and Dr Thomas are now undertaking further research to create viable skin models through the bioprinter. These models could be used to test treatments for skin disease and skin cancer or to create skin grafts to replace damaged skin.

In the long term, it’s hoped that this research will help to further our understanding of disease, contribute to tissue engineering and repair, and enable personalised medicine through the printing of cultured patient cells in labs across the globe.

The research team invites researchers everywhere to adopt this technology and develop the model with additional LEGO® components for the benefit of the entire biomedical research community.