An EU-funded project with more than three million euros, called the BRIGHTER project, involving European researchers from Barcelona (IBEC), who are coordinating the project, and Frankfurt (Goethe University), as well as partners from Haifa in Israel, Täby in Sweden and Reutlingen in Germany, is relying on a novel 3-D bioprinting system with which tissue and organs can be produced using lithography. Elena Martinez from Barcelona is the initiator of the research group and relies on this method, which involves the addition of living cells to special hydrogels. Lithography works in a similar way to semiconductor technology. The hydrogel with light-sensitive molecules is exposed in slices by light disc technology. So-called polymers are formed, i.e. branched chain structures that can absorb living cells as a matrix, so that a spatial structure can also be formed. The cells thus find an almost natural tissue structure. The top-down process, which builds up layers from top to bottom in contrast to conventional biodruck systems („bottom-up“), has other advantages. The biofabrication of complex tissues and anatomical microstructures, also for the formation of blood vessels, for example, is fast and inexpensive. This process also enables the scientists to achieve an unprecedented high resolution, which was too low for conventional printing systems using bio-ink in the 300 micrometer range. The cells did not survive very long with the „bio-ink process“, the process was tedious, the failure rate due to the spraying process was too high and complex cavity structures, for example, were also difficult to produce. The new BRIGHTER project („Bioprinting by light sheet lithography: engineering complex tissues with high resolution at high speed“) is promising, will start in July 2019 and will run for three years. Dr. Francesco Pampaloni from the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (BMLS) at Frankfurt’s Goethe University is one of the selected researchers in the project and is confident that this method will be able to compensate for the lack of organ donations in the future. Animal experiments might also be replaced one day.
