Biomimetic systems for cell engineering

Bioengineering is a core discipline for the medicine of the future, and Europe knows that. Proof of this is that the European Union (EU) has granted during the last months the coordination of three European projects to the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) to continue combining medicine, science and technology with the aim of improving people’s health. The first one is the BRIGHTER project that is led by Professor Elena Martínez, the head of the ‘Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering’ group. The EU has contributed to this initiative that will be used by the consortium partners to develop an innovative high resolution 3D bioprinting technology able to fabricate 3D cell culture substrates which could be useful to produce artificial organs in the future.

Elena Martínez, Group Leader at IBEC and UB Professor, has been awarded the prestigious “Proof of Concept” grant of the European Research Council (ERC). With her “GUT3D-PLATE” project, Martínez and her team at the “Biomimetic systems for cell engineering” group will further develop technology to fabricate ready-to-commercialize 3D cell culture substrates mimicking the intestinal physiology.

A system developed by researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Centre of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMR[B]) is capable of producing tissues in a laboratory that simulate the behaviour of the human heart. The tissues produced by this bioengineering system could be used to pre-evaluate the toxicity of drugs in the heart without using animal models. Cardiovascular diseases are currently one of the leading causes of death worldwide. However, the factors that motivate or accentuate such heart diseases sometimes hide behind relatively unknown elements. Among other causes, drugs that are useful for curing or alleviating certain diseases can, at the same time, have side effects on other organs such as the heart, which experts refer to as cardiotoxicity.

During the last decade, intestinal organoids have emerged as a crucial tool to study intestinal biology in vitro. However, their sphere-like geometry limits the access to the organoid’s lumen hampering their use in many functional experiments where independent access to the different sides of the epithelium is required.

A group of experts at Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) lead the European project BRIGHTER (Bioprinting by light-sheet lithography: engineering complex tissues with high resolution at high speed), an initiative to develop an innovative and high resolution 3D bioprinting technology able to produce functional tissues.

The President of the European Research Council, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, visited last May 15th the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). The event was inaugurated by IBEC’s Director, Josep Samitier, who presented an overview on the cutting-edge research carried out at the institute in the fields of bioengineering and nanomedicine. Afterwards, ERC Grantees working at IBEC had the opportunity to explain the impact of ERC grants on their professional careers and established a dialogue with ERC President on the past, present and future of the European Research Council.

The Biomimetic systems for cell engineering group has developed a new method to generate 3D intestinal tissue using hydrogels. This new in vitro model has been improved by providing cells with a more physiologically realistic environment, including tissue architecture, cell-matrix interactions and chemical signalling while remaining compatible with standard cell characterization techniques.Epithelial tissues contain complex three-dimensional microtopographies that are essential for their proper performance. These 3D microstructures provide cells with the physicochemical and mechanical signals needed to guide their self-organization into functional tissue structures and are key to their proper functioning.

Jemish Parmar from IBEC’s Smart Nano-Bio-Devices group has been awarded a Premi Pioner from CERCA for his Doctoral Thesis “Micromotors for Environmental Applications”. Since their launch in 2014, the prizes recognize researchers who present a doctoral thesis with results that are clearly aimed at commercial exploitation. The third IBEC winner of one of these prestigious awards, Jemish was honoured alongside the three other winners – from ICFO, CTFC and IGTP – at a ceremony yesterday. The jury in this fifth edition of the Premis Pioner was made up of Eduard Balbuena (Enterprise Department at UAB), Josep Maria Pujals (IP lawyer at Oficina Ponti), Melba Navarro (Knowledge Transfer Technology Manager at CIMNE Tecnologia), Anna López Lozano (IP expert),

IBEC’s Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering group has published a review about possible new strategies to study drug absorption in the intestine in the high-ranking journal Trends in Molecular Medicine. Together with their collaborators at the Universidade do Porto, Elena Martinez’s group examines the current state-of-the-art of cell-based intestinal models, which have been used for drug absorption and metabolism studies since the 1980s. However, current models, which use Caco-2 cells derived from human intestinal tumors, are not fully representative of the human small intestine.

A ‘Results in Brief’ article about Elena Martinez’s ERC project COMIET has been published on the CORDIS website, the EC’s Community Research and Development Information Service.