Descripción del proyecto
La bioimpresión 3D permite crear tejido humano en el laboratorio
Gracias a que la impresión 3D permite crear células vivas, la investigación y los tratamientos médicos ven surgir horizontes nuevos e increíbles, ya que sería posible utilizar tejidos humanos creados en un laboratorio en aplicaciones y estudios biomédicos. Sin embargo, la complejidad existente a la hora de registrar los procesos o funciones de morfogénesis de los órganos constituye un reto. Por ello, el proyecto financiado con fondos europeos ENLIGHT desarrollará una solución tecnológica de vanguardia de bioimpresión volumétrica que combine la impresión 3D con la fotónica y la biología sintética. Utiliza tomografía de luz visible para dar forma a las células o a los biomateriales en tejidos vivos de una manera ultrarrápida, de alta resolución y con múltiples materiales, al tiempo que permite por primera vez la impresión 3D de las funciones celulares. Esto abre la puerta a una nueva era de la investigación médica.
Objetivo
With its ability to print living cells into shapes that resemble human organs, 3D bioprinting has risen exceptional hopes in the quest to produce lab-made human tissues for biomedical applications. However, today’s bioprinting has no means to actively steer cell behaviour and morphogenesis, leaving yet unfulfilled the potential to fully capture organ functions. Challenging this current perspective, ENLIGHT merges synthetic biology, 3D printing, and photonics to develop a radically new technological concept termed optogenetic volumetric bioprinting. This ultra-fast technique uses visible light tomography to sculpt cells and biomaterials into multi-material, high-resolution, centimetre-scale living tissues within less than a minute. Through synthetic biology-inspired strategies, stem cells gain the ability to sense and respond to light patterns provided by the printer and differentiate into selected cell types, essentially permitting for the first time to 3D print cell functions. ENLIGHT targets two breakthroughs: the development of a volumetric bioprinter capable of optogenetic stimulation to instruct cell fate, and its application to build physiological-scale tissues and organoids that replicate human organ-level functionality. As proof-of-concept ENLIGHT will print vascularized endocrine pancreas models that exhibit native-like function. ENLIGHT will introduce a technology for bioprinting a new generation of reliable user-customizable in vitro models to study human biology and pathology. This is urgently needed to advance drug discovery, personalized medicine and to aid the transition to animal-free biomedical research. These results and the actions of industrial, academic and social science consortium partners, will lay the foundation to build market opportunities, leading research and innovation capacity across Europe. On the longer term, ENLIGHT envisions to offer new tools to solve donor organ shortage for transplantation and regenerative medicine.
Ámbito científico
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologycells technologiesstem cells
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepathology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinetransplantation
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01
Régimen de financiación
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinador
3584 CX Utrecht
Países Bajos