Scalable robotic biofabrication of tissue spheroids

Area of Science:

• Biomaterials Science
• Tissue Engineering
• Regenerative Medicine

Background:

• Scalable biofabrication of uniform tissue spheroids is crucial for creating larger tissue and organ constructs.
• Existing methods like hanging drops have limitations in uniformity and scalability.
• Micromolded recessed templates in non-adhesive hydrogels offer a promising scalable approach.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an improved micromolded hydrogel technique for scalable, uniform tissue spheroid fabrication.
• To enhance the existing micromolded recessed template method for higher throughput and consistency.
• To validate the reliability of this automated method for tissue spheroid generation.

Main Methods:

• Design of a novel mold generating 61 microrecessions per well in a 96-well plate.
• Automated cell seeding into microrecessions using an EpMotion 5070 pipetting machine.
• Comparison of spheroids generated via micromolding with those from the conventional hanging drop method.

Main Results:

• Successful formation of tissue spheroids at the bottom of microrecessions after 48 hours of incubation.
• Micromolded spheroids demonstrated significantly greater uniformity in diameter compared to hanging drop spheroids.
• The automated micromolded method proved reliable for fabricating large numbers of uniform spheroids.

Conclusions:

• The improved micromolded recessed hydrogel technique, combined with automated cell seeding, enables reliable, scalable robotic fabrication of uniform tissue spheroids.
• This method overcomes limitations of conventional techniques, offering enhanced consistency for tissue engineering applications.
• This advancement is vital for the development of bioprinted tissue and organ constructs.