Multi-Material Digital Light Processing Bioprinting of complex tissue structures for organ-on-a-chip

Summary

A Spanish company developed an advanced 3D bioprinting technology for a fast high resolution (1-10 microns) multimaterial biofabrication of tissue engineering constructs. The system was validated for the generation of artificial hard and soft tissues, vascular and for tumor environments on a chip. The company looks for technical cooperation or commercial agreements with technical assistance with partners dedicated to bioengineering, tissue engineering, drug development or regenerative medicine.

Description

Biofabrication technologies will revolutionize the diagnosis, treatment, recovery and ongoing support provided to people with a wide range of medical conditions, including many common disabilities. However, there is an urgent need to close the gap between the continuing scientific inquiry in this field and its ability to deliver on clinical needs.
Significant effort is required to deliver a fully optimized process for translating robust biofabrication and tissue engineering technologies into tangible and valid applications in human healthcare. The singular aspect of biofabrication that will realize translatability, commercialisation and, ultimately, the delivery of biofabrication solutions to the community, lies in the cross-disciplinary integration of numerous key established disciplines.
There is a lack of in-depth understanding within the industry of the variety of next-generation technologies capable of handling, mimicking and supporting the unimaginable natural complexity of living organisms.
To tackle this, a Spanish biotech company has developed a 3D bioprinting system based on DMD (Digital Mirror device), which, in combination with a microfluidics cell-loaded biomaterials delivery systems, allows reaching resolutions of 10 μm with fast biofabrication speeds to maintain viability. The system has been validated for the generation of artificial tissues of bone, cartilage, cornea tissue, vascular and for tumor environments on a chip.
Existing technologies do not provide the flexibility of complete printing of cell embedded hydrogel-based microfluidic chip for high throughput studies, but this new bioprinter methodology does hold a certain edge. It allows a rapid fabrication of cell embedded robust microfluidic chip for drug screening and vascularized tissue/organ models on-a-chip production, with high level control over cell positioning according to the architecture experienced in vivo.
The company is looking for partnership opportunities in the bionegineering field (bioengineering devices) as well as in the biomedical field (pharma, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering).
They would welcome collaborations to address the most serious unmet needs in biofabrication technologies related to tissue engineering under a commercial agreements with technical assistance and technical cooperations for the development of a market-ready device with an improved repeatability, resolution and multi-material handling capabiblities by means of a technology cooperation agreement.

Advantages & innovations

This new bioprinting system is based on the development of custom heads or modules according to the needs of each researcher or company. In such a way that a 3D Bioprinter unit can be adapted to a specific application and allows the incorporation of independent modules, without the need of acquiring a new system. Likewise, this 3D Bioprinter enables "Top-down and Bottom-up" approaches which are able to fabricate “soft” and “hard” tissues. The customized software also enable a free control over all the parameters involved in the bioprinter process.

Stage of development

Available for demonstration

Contact/ source: Enterprise Europe Network (europa.eu)