In a move that slashes 90 percent of the cost of mass-producing metastatic microtumors and therapeutic microtissues for screening and research, Rice University bioengineers have adapted techniques from the "maker" movement to reprogram a commercial laser cutter to etch up to 50,000 tiny "microwells" per hour into sheets of silicone. The fabrication technique, which was developed with open-source software and hardware, is described in a new study published in the journal RSC Advances .