Description du projet
La bio‑impression 3D permet de fabriquer des tissus humains en laboratoire
L’impression 3D permettant l’impression de cellules vivantes, de nouveaux horizons surprenants se dessinent dans la recherche et les traitements médicaux, car l’impression de tissus humains fabriqués en laboratoire pourrait être utilisée dans le cadre d’études et d’applications biomédicales. Toutefois, la complexité actuelle de la capture des processus de morphogenèse ou des fonctions des organes constitue un défi. C’est pourquoi le projet ENLIGHT, financé par l’UE, développera une solution technologique révolutionnaire de bio‑impression volumétrique combinant l’impression 3D avec la biologie synthétique et la photonique. Elle utilise la tomographie à lumière visible pour façonner les cellules ou les biomatériaux en tissu vivant en mode ultra‑rapide, multi‑matériaux et à haute résolution, tout en permettant pour la première fois l’impression 3D des fonctions cellulaires. Cela ouvre une nouvelle ère dans la recherche médicale.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- 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
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinateur
3584 CX Utrecht
Pays-Bas