Francesco Pampaloni, Louise Breideband and Levin Hafa participate in a video to explain the work developed at the Physical Biology Group from the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF). Their role in Brighter Project is, together with Mycronic, to adapt the light-sheet microscopy technique to 3D bioprinting. In their laboratory they are focused in applying physical models and physical technologies to understand biological systems.

Through the initiative of the European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services, the EIC Pathfinder Bootcamp: from Academia to Business was a virtual event that took place from 16 to 19 February 2021, offering an intensive course in business and entrepreneurship to beneficiaries of FET-Open & FET-Proactive projects. In this frame, Gustaf Mårtensson from Mycronic took this opportunity to bring new ideas on leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship to BRIGHTER Project.

  Last 11 of February we celebrated worldwide the 6^th International Day of Women and Girls in Science, with plenty of activities to help eliminating long-standing biases and gender stereotypes that are steering girls and women away from science related fields. One of these science disseminations activities was held by Núria Torras, researcher working at Brighter Project in the Biomimetic systems for cell engineering group from Elena Martinez at IBEC, Barcelona. 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

On the occasion of the 6th International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we interview Aya Amitai-Lange and Anna Altshuler to know a little bit more about them. They are the two women that carry out the Bright project at Technion, Israel. Both Anna and Aya work at the laboratory of Prof. Ruby Shalom-Feuerstein, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Cellendes launches a new video! This time they show human fibroblast cells that grow inside an hydrogel network. Cellendes, an industrial partner of BRIGHTER project keeps moving forward to create controlled cell environments suitable for 3D cell culture. They developed an Interpenetrating Network (IPN) hydrogel for sculpturing complex tissue architectures by light sheet lithography.

What is your role within Brighter and what it entails?
I am the scientific project coordinator, so I am in charge of supervising the scientific tasks carried out by my team but also of coordinating the different workpackages among the BRIGTHER partners to be sure that deliveries are on time and the project objectives are fulfilled.
Could you tell us a little bit about the concrete work you’re involved in inside Brighter project?
As the main promoters of BRIGTHER new bioprinting concept, IBEC is the in charge of coordinating the full proposal at the scientific and managing level. My role is to propose key experiments that will transform BRIGTHER’s idea from a concept to a first prototype working in a lab environment.

Engineered tissues are key elements for both in vitro and in vivo applications and strongly impact the academy, pharma, and clinical sectors. In the future, laboratory-produced tissues might lead to replace damaged tissues and organs. 3D printing technology is the most used technique to fabricate such tissues, however some challenges must still be solved. The European Project Brighter aims to increase the spatial resolution of the engineered tissues and to speed up the tissue printing process.

Cellendes just launched a video showing the photopolymerization process of hydrogels. It may look simple, but to arrive here thorough research, technology and science, supported by the Horizon 2020 project BRIGHTER was needed!

FRANKFURT. The production of artificial organs is a hot research topic. In the near future, artificial organs will compensate for the lack of organ donations and replace animal experiments. Although there are already promising experiments with 3D printers that use a "bio-ink" containing living cells, a functional organ has never been created in this way. A European consortium coordinated by Dr Elena Martinez (IBEC, Barcelona, Spain) and involving the Goethe University Frankfurt is now breaking new ground. The consortium is developing a lithography method that relies on light sheet illumination and on special photosensitive hydrogels that are mixed with living cells.

The new project “Bioprinting by light sheet lithography: engineering complex tissues with high resolution at high speed” (BRIGHTER) will be funded by the prestigious and highly selective Future and Emerging Technologies EU programme (FET Open, part of Horizon 2020). The EU will support this three year project with a grant of 3,450,000 €  of which 700,000 € will go to the Physical Biology Group of the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Goethe University. The consortium of BRIGHTER includes Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany), IBEC (Barcelona, Spain, consortium coordinators), Technion (Haifa, Israel) as well as the companies Cellendes (Reutlingen, Germany) and Mycronic (Täby, Sweden).