Advanced 3D Complex Tissues BioAssembly Platform for Precision Disease Modeling, Drug Discovery and Regenerative Medicine (3D-BioBOT)

This 3D-BioBOT project aims at establishing an advanced 3D bioassembly platform with broad deployability in KUL to generate robust in vitro human-cognate multicellular and organoid models that enable precision disease modeling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. Currently, the models’ fidelity relies on spontaneous cellular self-organizations which often lead to uncontrolled heterogeneous tissue constructs with limited cell-to-cell crosstalks hence distorted growth factor gradients vital for appropriate tissue specification, maturation and function. Consequently, it jeopardizes the robustness, predictability and reliability of these models for effective translational medicine. The proposed BioAssemblyBot (BAB) workstation is able to restore the dysregulated cell organization by biofabricating cell-laden bioinks at pre-defined micro-scale spatial resolution mimicking the biological complexity in an automated robotic manner. Automation implies round-clock operation and higher throughput feasibility at minimal manual intervention, thus reducing overall operation cost while performing research effectively at larger scale.

Keywords:Automated Biofabrication, 3D Multicellular Models, Organoids, Disease Modeling, Drug Discovery, Regenerative Medicine, High-Throughput Screening

Disciplines:Stem cell biology, Regenerative medicine not elsewhere classified, In vitro testing