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Requests

We are open to cooperations with scientific partners and industry upon reasonable request. Please fill out the form below and contact us at bioprinting@i-med.ac.at.

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Nanoprinting

We use a NanoOne Bio 2-photon polymerization printer to perform high‑resolution 3D micro- and nanofabrication. In combination with colored or fully transparent, biocompatible resins, we meet potential optical, biological, and technical requirements, and can produce completely customizable, CAD-design based structures. We fabricate features ranging from a few millimeters down to the sub‑micrometer scale, enabling precise prototyping and functional devices for advanced research.

Microneedles

3×3 microneedle array. Pyramid shaped needles – base length: 300 µm, height: 600 µm (left). Close-up of needles (left-middle). Close-up of negative mold in PDMS (right-middle). Close-up of a microneedle with slit-shaped pores (right).

We successfully printed various needle design concepts to deliver a desired payload through the skin’s keratinocyte layer to a specific depth into the dermis:

  • Hollow needles
  • Porous microneedles
  • Microneedle master for creating dissolvable microneedles from a PDMS mold

Microfluidic chips

We develop custom-designed microfluidic chips or modify commercially available microfluidic chips with a structural resolution down to the micrometer range.

Micro- and Nanostructure

Custom-designed microfluidic chip with two supply channels that unite in the center and two drain channels (left). Gyroid-based, three-dimensional cubic scaffold. Channel diameter main cube: 500 µm. Channel diameter cube at the front top: 125 µm. Channel diameter is arbitrary and scalable (left-middle). A TurboRFP whole-cell labelled fibroblast migrating through a membrane with pores 10 µm in diameter (right-middle). Proof-of-concept printing of lines with widths of 100, 150, and 200 nm (right).

We print structures in the cellular or subcellular size range (scaffolds, pores, holes, pillars, knobs,…) to

  • provide cells with a customizable three-dimensional environment in which to grow, proliferate, aggregate, or migrate
  • study cell migration, cell mechanics, and cell adhesion, or to functionalize surfaces

3D-bioprinted tissue

Using 3D bioprinting, we reproduce the three-dimensional tissue architecture of normal and malignant tissue of the human body as closely as possible. Our bioprinted human tissue models represent alternatives to animal testing in the nonclinical drug development phase and are suitable test models for drug screening, toxicity testing or for investigating biological processes in a multicellular 3-dimensional context

Skin

Left: Hematoxylin-Eosin staining of 3D-bioprinted skin cross-sections. Right: 3D-bioprinted skin cancer model in a microfluidic chip (melanoma spheroids in dark growing into the bioprinted skin).

We successfully established 3D-bioprinted human skin that consists of a dermal fibroblast layer with a differentiated epidermal keratinocyte layer. The bioprinted skin models display differentiation markers analogous to normal human skin that are consistent with a fully differentiated keratinocyte layer and an intact barrier function. The bioprinted skin can be used to study the following processes:

  • Preclinical drug screening
  • Toxicity tests
  • Skin barrier/skin penetration tests
  • Skin aging
  • Wound healing

Tumor models

Left: 3D-bioprinted neuroblastoma-on-chip model with metastatic cancer cells (red) invading from the tumor core into the surrounding matrix with fibroblasts (green). Right: Applications of 3D-bioprinted tumor models. Scheme generated using Academic AI v2.2.5

Our 3D-bioprinted tumor models combine human tumor cells with different cells of the stromal tumor microenvironment, carefully chosen to recapitulate the surroundings of the respective organ. These models allow the following analyses:

  • Preclinical drug screening
  • Toxicity tests on surrounding tumor microenvironment
  • Biological processes of tumor development and progression (proliferation, invasion, metastasis, resistance mechanisms,…)
  • Cellular interplay within the tumor microenvironment (CAF-directed migration, reciprocal crosstalk, metabolic interactions,…)