Achievement

Trainee Caroline Cvetkovic has created a novel cellular system capable of actuation and fabricated using cells and hydrogels. A stereolithographic 3D printing technique was used to create a hydrogel backbone made of a beam connecting two pillars that supports a muscle strip made of skeletal muscle cells in a fibrin-based matrix. The entire device is termed a “bio-bot,” or biological robot. Contraction of the cells within the muscle strip produced enough force to move the pillars and displace the bio-bot on a surface in a liquid medium.