Printing synthetic human skin using a LEGO 3D printer

Scientists at Cardiff University's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have designed and built a fully-functional 3D printer out of LEGO that can print synthetic skin and other tissues. Using LEGO Mindstorm kits and a programmable controller, they have designed an inexpensive and easy-to-build 3D printer that is contributing to pioneering research. The team at Cardiff (Dr Chris Taylor, Dr Sion Coulman, Dr Oliver Castell, and Dr Ahmed Moukachar) are using the printer to create 3D models of synthetic skin to be able to test drug delivery and efficacy. The team have published the design for the printer so that researchers across the globe can build their own. This work was primarily supported by a British Skin Foundation (BSF) PhD studentship grant (059/s/16), together with support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement ID: 824060 – ‘ACDC’.