Biohybrid actuator bill of materials: every line item, priced where a price exists

Nobody publishes a parts list for a biohybrid actuator, so every group entering the field reconstructs one from methods sections. This page is that list.

The organising principle is honesty about price availability. Some of these lines have a real, published, machine-checkable price and we state it with the date we re-verified it. Most do not, and those lines say quote only rather than carrying an estimate. That distinction is the useful part: it tells you exactly where your budget is knowable in advance and where it is not, which is a different and more actionable thing than a total.

No total is given. Consumption rates depend on construct volume, culture duration and how many attempts fail — and the failure count dominates early. Adding this column would produce a number that looks authoritative and is not.

Section 1 — The living part

The last row is the one to carry away. Two rows above it prove finished contractile tissue is purchasable — that is a genuine and fairly recent change. But a construct guaranteed to produce a stated force under a stated stimulation protocol is still not something you can order, and that gap is why most of the rest of this list exists.

Section 2 — The mould

The myrPlate Gradient deserves a note out of proportion to its price. Post stiffness is one of the largest device-side levers on measured force — Smith and colleagues recorded day-10 twitch falling from 1156.3 ± 129.1 µN at 1.92 N/m to 624.0 ± 154.6 µN at 0.96 N/m, with the two softest stiffnesses bending so far under passive tension that no active contraction could be measured at all. A plate that varies stiffness across its own wells converts that from a series of experiments into one experiment, for EUR 60 more than the uniform plate.

Section 3 — Matrix and media

This section has no published prices, and the reason is structural rather than an omission: these are catalogue chemicals sold through distributor accounts at institution-specific pricing, in pack sizes that do not map onto a per-construct figure. What we can state is what each is for and what the literature says about choosing it — which is the part that actually affects your result.

The one procurement action worth taking here: reserve your basement membrane extract and serum lots at the start of a study. Lot changes mid-study produce force differences that look like experimental results and are not. This costs nothing except asking, and no vendor volunteers it.

Section 4 — Control and stimulation

Chronic stimulation is, on the published evidence, the single largest lever on force output in this entire parts list — larger than the cell source. A group that funds cells and a device but not a stimulator has funded weak tissue. The optogenetic control route covers the light-driven alternative, which costs less in hardware and more in cell engineering.

Section 5 — Measurement

That last row is not a purchase and is the most frequently skipped item on this entire page. A post deflection measurement is only a force measurement if the post stiffness is known and stated. Every published force in the force specification reference that cannot be normalised failed at exactly this step.

Section 6 — What you cannot buy at all

Stated plainly, because these are the lines that break project plans:

• A force-specified living actuator. No supplier lists one with a spec, a price and a lead time.
• Insect dorsal vessel tissue. No commercial source exists. Every published use is a laboratory dissection, so this is a collaboration question rather than a procurement one.
• A biohybrid device with a service life you can quote. Published skeletal lifetimes are measured in days to about a week for untethered constructs.
• Skilled culture labour by the hour. You hire it, second it, or contract an entire programme — there is no spot market.
• Four to six weeks per iteration. The one line item that no budget can compress.

How to use this list in an RFQ

Three things make a biohybrid quote comparable, and all three are routinely omitted:

1. State the device geometry as a specification, with post stiffness and a tolerance — not as a picture. Stiffness changes measured force nearly two-fold within one published dataset.
2. State the stimulation protocol — frequency, duty cycle, duration, and whether it is maturation pacing or actuation. A force number without it is not comparable to anything.
3. Ask explicitly whether the deliverable is a report or a physical part, and if a part, whether it comes against a force acceptance criterion. This is the single question that most often changes the answer, and the one buyers most often forget to ask.

The quote normalisation worksheet covers the general form of this problem across custom biology.

How we can help

We put one written specification to the cell suppliers, the device makers and the contract laboratories at the same time, and return the quotes normalised to a cost per construct rather than a cost per vial or per plate. Where a line on this page says quote-only, that is precisely the work: finding out what the number actually is for your geometry and volume. Where the honest answer is “buy the finished tissue at EUR 1,400 and skip six weeks”, we will say that, because we take no margin on you doing more work than you need to.