(252d) Advancing Diagnostics and Therapies by Enabling Scientists with 3D-Printing Technologies

The Spence group, housed in the new Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering at Michigan State University, currently has 3 core projects under investigation. Broadly defined, these projects are in the fields of (1) diabetes, (2) multiple sclerosis (MS), and (3) blood banking. While a number of quantitative measurement schemes (classic scintillation counting, microscopy, mass spectrometry) and methods (ELISA, cell culture, separation science) are used to investigate these problems, it has been our ability to fabricate 3D-printed devices that has advanced our understanding of the molecular level events important to each project. Various enabling technologies from the 3D-printer will be shown throughout the talk, with an emphasis on 3D-printed, in vitro devices that either enable cell to cell communication or, as in the case with our blood banking efforts, provide scaled-down versions of protocols for studies in our academic laboratories. Importantly, many of these prototyping efforts were not possible with other “academic” prototyping methods based on soft-lithographic procedures, a mainstay in our group for nearly a decade.