Arxius: News

Last 19-21 of April B-BRIGHTER members meet together at Tübingen for the 6M internal and progress meetings and a visit to the new facilities of CELLENDES.

The hotel Krone in Tübingen hosted for two days B-BRIGHTER project. On the 20^th and the morning of the 21^st of April, researchers met for an internal monitoring of the work done during the first six months of the project, and to discuss the following steps until the end of the year. All workpackages were presented by their coordinators and researchers could evaluate the advances until know and propose strategies and ideas to surpass obstacles.

During the afternoon of the last day, took place the progress meeting, among project members and the EIC Project Advisor and Program Manager. This was a very fruitful discussion where the project coordinator, Gustaf Mårtensson, presented the goals, the product, the development program, and the current status of the project. He highlighted the achievements during this initial phase and stressed out what is planned for the next six months.

B-BRIGHTER project had a notable participation at the last 3D Cell Culture Conference: Models, Applications & Translation, with two talks and two posters explaining the rationale behind the project and the latest advances. The emphasis of this year’s meeting was on advanced and predictive 3D cell culture models.

Last 17-19 April, Cellendes, Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF) and the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), brought to light B-BRIGHTER project to the assistants of the 7th 3D Cell Culture Conference, held at Freiburg, Germany. The 3D Cell Culture Conference (3DCC) is an initiative of DECHEMA, a non-profit professional society which promotes scientific and technical exchange among experts from different disciplines, organizations and generations, concretely, it is organized by the working groups “Cell Culture Technology” and “Medical Biotechnology”.

The main topics of the 7th edition of the 3DCC series were the latest tendencies in development, biology and applications of organoids, the biology in microphysiological systems, new developments in the field of personalised medicine, the path from 3D cell cultures to cell-based therapies, as well as enabling technologies for standardisation and scalability.

In addition to the scientific presentations, the meeting spotlighted practical applications, products, and solutions, triggering engaging conversations among researchers, solution providers, and users.

UNISTEM Day annual event is designed for high school students, aiming to kindle their interest and potentially unveil a passion for science and scientific exploration through the lens of stem cell research topics and challenges. In this context, Nuria Torras from B-BRIGHTER project talked about 3D Bioprinting and tissue regeneration.

UNISTEM Day event is set to take place simultaneously across multiple universities in Europe, spanning countries such as Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. In Spain, universities from various regions come together, collaborating with research centres to arrange tailored activities, including presentations, discussions, film screenings, and recreational activities.

The idea behind UNISTEM Day is to give participants the opportunity to uncover the world of research, not only delving into scientific content and methodologies, but also realizing that research can be enjoyable and conducive to personal and social connections.

Nuria Torras, B-BRIGHTER researcher at the Biomimetic systems for cell engineering group from Elena Martinez at IBEC in Barcelona, participated this year in the fifteenth UNISTEM, held the 10th of March, under the motto “The long and fascinating journey of stem cell research”, a day devoted to learning, discovering and discussing about stem cell research, including cultural expectations and ethical issues.

Nuria’s talk, which took place at the University of Barcelona (UB) to about 140 high school students, was centred on 3D bioimpression and tissue regeneration, with a focus on the principles and objectives of B-BRIGHTER Project.

A collateral aim of the event is to engage students across Europe, uniting them from diverse nations through social networks and interconnections among various universities.

Gustaf Mårtensson from MYCRONIC, coordinator of B-BRIGHTER project, was invited to give a talk at the last Optopub, organised by PhotonicSweden and the Swedish Optical Society.

Optopubs are seminars designed to stimulate the discussion about new technologies, socialize and have an exchange between players with different backgrounds in fields related with photonics and optics, promoting new collaborations and opportunities among companies, universities, and institutes in the field of optics and photonics in Sweden and abroad. These seminars are organised by PhotonicSweden and the Swedish Optical Society and take place in three Swedish cities: Stockholm, Lund and Gothenburg.

Gustaf Mårtensson, coordinator of B-BRIGHTER, was invited to talk about the project on the first Optopubs seminars of the year, held last 16^th of February at the company Cobolt AB, a part of HÜBNER Photonics and under the title: “High Performance Lasers Enabling Innovative Life Science Applications”. In this context, Gustaf explained the details of the European Project B-BRIGHTER focusing on the contribution of MYCRONIC in the system design for pattern generators as well as for pattern generator optics, servo, data channel and system control software in the development of the innovative 3D bioprinter based on light-sheet technology.

The other two talks were “Real-time single-molecule 3D tracking in E. coli”, by Elias Amselem from Uppsala University, and “Transient state (TRAST) spectroscopy and imaging of cellular and molecular states and conditions – exploiting the sensing side of fluorophore blinking kinetics” by Jerker Widengren from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. To close the event, Håkan Karlsson, CEO of Cobolt AB and Head of HÜBNER Photonics, presented the company.

Participating in this kind of events helps increasing the awareness among the general public and politicians of the strategic importance of optics and photonics in many fields, as in the case of B-BRIGHTER, in biomedicine. It is also a great opportunity to spread the word about B-BRIGHTER and sow seeds for collaborations with companies and research groups working in related areas.

Last 11 of February, Nuria Torras, B-BRIGHTER researcher at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), went to a school near Barcelona to explain her research and show that women can also be excellent scientists!

Every year since 2015, on the 11 of February we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, declared by the United Nations. The main objective of this worldwide event is to eradicate gender stereotypes and established prejudices that have hindered the involvement of girls and women in science. Globally, this day stands as an engagement to offering comprehensive and unbiased opportunities for women and girls within the scientific domain. The various activities put forth are geared towards fostering the empowerment of women and girls, fostering their engagement in scientific pursuits, and advancing the cause of gender parity.

In this context, Nuria Torras, researcher at the Biomimetic systems for cell engineering group from Elena Martinez at IBEC in Barcelona, took part in the 8^th International Day of Women and Girls in Science. She participated in the annual event 100tifiques, organized by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI) and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), an initiative that aims to bring science closer to schools and claim the female scientific talent.

Nuria gave a talk to about 30 students (11 years-old) from the Creu Alta School at Sabadell, a city near Barcelona. She explained a little bit the work done in B-Brighter project and talked about the principles of 3D printing, the biological models, the material and cell types they use in the laboratory. Among the questions students asked Nuria, one was very original: “Can humans eat what you use to feed the cells in the laboratory?” Who knows… Maybe in the future this will arrive!

To conclude her participation, Nuria explained her trajectory to become a scientist and make them realize that a scientist is an ordinary person who also has a family, hobbies… and can also be a women! Students were very interested and motivated and took the opportunity to exchange with Nuria not only about science but also about being a female scientist.

The Swedish online magazine Elektroniktidningen recently published an article about the B-BRIGHTER project.

“It takes no more than ten minutes to produce a 10x10x1 millimetre piece of tissue from a hydrogel mixed with stem cells and MYCRONIC’s laser system drawing the structure. The next phase of the EU B-BRIGHTER project will be to bring the technology one step closer to a commercial product”. This is how the article about the B-BRIGHTER innovative 3D bioprint technology published the 12^th of January on “Elektroniktidningen” begins. This online magazine provides the Swedish electronics industry with qualified news, analyses, and in-depth technical articles. They also have a website in Finland.

The article highlights the advantages of this new technology to produce bioprinted human tissues over what exists nowadays: “Creating living tissues is a relatively new area where capillary dispensing has been used to build layer after layer from the bone upwards. With laser technology it is possible to do the opposite and build freely in space in the hydrogel. It is also much faster, meaning that a higher proportion of cells are still alive when the tissue is complete”.

In B-BRIGHTER technology, an acousto-optic technique is a key element. It is used to control the light from the laser and consists of two parts, one that affects the intensity of the light and one that affects the direction. “Starting with a 3D cad of the object to be manufactured, it is converted into voxels, each of which has a position and an intensity. It is possible to create any pattern, says Robert Eklund at MYCRONIC.

The initial project (named BRIGHTER) was funded with almost 3 million € by the EU, while the continuation, the B-BRIGHTER project, has received more that 1,5 million € for creating a product that can manufacture tissues and bring it closer to the market. In the actual phase, researchers are trying to make different types of tissues including skin, cornea and intestine, all of which have their characteristic shapes.

The article also emphasizes that the system will not only produce tissues, but by using a separate laser it will also be possible to see what is happening in real time.

You can read the original article in this link.

For two years, Gustaf Mårtensson, coordinator of B-BRIGHTER project at MYCRONIC, will spend part of his time working at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm studying bioprinting applications and technology development.

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning, SSF) recently published the list with the nine projects that will be granted in the last call of the Strategic Mobility Program, and B-BRIGHTER is one of them! Under the title ‘Novel light-based bioprinting strategies’, the project will receive about 90K euros for two years to allow Gustaf from MYCRONIC to work in close collaboration with researchers at SciLifeLab at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH (school of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health). The main objective is to identify and better understand use cases for B-BRIGHTER bioprinter.

The SSF is an autonomous and unaffiliated entity in the public research funding system which economically supports research in the fields of science, technology, and medicine. Its mission is to foster the growth of robust research ecosystems that attain the highest global standards, supporting the development of the Swedish industrial and academic and fostering its competitiveness. In this context, the Strategic Mobility Program increases knowledge transfer and cross-fertilization between sectors and also gives researchers the opportunity to develop by changing workplace from academia/research institute to business/authority/hospital, or vice versa.

Last Wednesday took place at Mycronic, in Sweden, the kick-off meeting of the B-BRIGHTER project. Members of all partner institutions participated to lay the first stone of this exciting bioprinting project.

B-BRIGHTER (Better bioprinting by light sheet lithography: engineering complex tissues with high resolution at high speed) project is a EIC Transition project funded by the EU and coordinated by Dr. Gustaf Märtensson and his team at Mycronic, a global supplier of high precision production of electronics technology and equipment. B-BRIGHTER is the natural continuation of the EU project BRIGHTER, ended last December, and it aims to bring the new bioprinting technology closer to the market, being naturally more oriented to the industry and investors.

Project members meet last 19^th of October in Täby, Sweden, to discuss about their role and responsibilities in the project, and about its functioning, including the main production and research lines. They also defined the work plan for the following months and the near future actions inside each work package.

B-BRIGHTER at a glance

B-BRIGHTER will develop a novel bioprinting technology able to produce engineered tissues with high spatial resolution at high printing speed using an original top-down lithography approach. The project has the objective of establishing a business case for the light-based bioprinter.

In contrast with current bottom up, layer-by-layer bioprinting methods, B-BRIGHTER aims at ultrahigh-speed digital light-sheet illumination strategy to selectively photo-crosslink cell-laden hydrogels mimicking specific tissues, in confined voxels and produce three-dimensional complex geometries. For this, researchers will develop a top-down lithography method that will enable adjusting the spatial structure and the stiffness with an unprecedented resolution to create the same heterogeneous microstructures that cells find in natural tissues.

As a proof-of-concept, researchers will engineer three complex barrier tissues models: skin, cornea and gut. B-BRIGHTER technology will enable the bioprinting of key anatomical microfeatures of tissue such as invaginations, evaginations or wavy morphologies. It will also incorporate hollow vascular structures while maintaining tissue mechanical integrity without the need of additional sacrificial material

The B-BRIGHTER consortium (the same as in BRIGHTER) is composed by: Mycronic, as coordinator; the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC); the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (BMLS) of the Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF); the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and the company Cellendes.