URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Not all bioengineers who are using printers in the lab are trying to create tissues or organs. Some are intent on making biological machines.
In the laboratory of Rashid Bashir, head of the bioengineering department at the University of Illinois here, researchers have made small hybrid "biobots" — part gel, part muscle cell — that can move on their own. The research may someday lead to the development of tiny devices that could travel within the body, sensing toxins and delivering medication.
Vincent Chan, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab and lead author of a paper published last fall describing the work, said he first started looking at using 3-D printers about five years ago. "Our goal coming into this was the holy grail — organ printing," he said. "But, obviously, it's very complex and very difficult." So he and others in the lab began looking at other ways to use the technology.
With the biobots, the printer prints the gel, not the cells. And it prints the gel in a specific shape — something like a tiny springboard, about one-quarter-inch long, that is elevated on a short base. Then heart muscle cells from rats are placed on one side of the board.
"The cells start to spread out and form connections," Dr. Chan said. And then, being heart cells, they start to beat in unison. The contractions cause the board to curl and uncurl, moving the whole structure forward. With the 3-D printer, the researchers were able to make springboards of different thicknesses to alter the degree of curling, optimizing the movement.
The work is part of a multi-university research project, financed by the National Science Foundation, to develop multicellular devices with applications in health care, security and other fields. Or, as Dr. Chan put it, to take some of the components of organisms — muscle cells, brain cells and others — "and combine them in different ways to create a different type of biological machine."
The Illinois researchers are working on regulating the muscle contractions, which would have the effect of speeding or slowing the biobots, or getting them to start and stop. One obvious way to do this would be to use chemicals: Putting caffeine on the heart cells will increase the frequency of the contractions, for example. But Dr. Chan said the researchers were also looking at genetic engineering techniques that would allow them to use light to turn the contractions on or off.
"That's the fun part of this," he said. "Now we're trying to move to controlling it."
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