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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 last 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.

 

The main objective was to help researchers transform their ideas into products. The Innovation Training Workshops offered a valuable formation to help EIC Pathfinder projects work on the commercialization and value creation of their research project. Researchers were provided with a guide to transform the innovation from the laboratories into new marketable solutions. The main topics were: Introduction to innovation and entrepreneurship; Business Design Toolbox and Finance/Marketing & Pitching Training.

More information: https://community-smei.easme-web.eu/articles/open-call-eic-pathfinder-bootcamp-academia-business

 

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. The research of the lab is focused on the study of fundamental and translational research of skin, cornea and pluripotent stem cells. Inside Brighter project, their role is no less than to provide the cellular models, scientific knowledge about stem cell biology and collaborate on the fabrication and testing of the new engineered tissues using the biomaterial scaffold to be developed by the bio-engineering experts.

Aya and Anna are highly qualified scientists, both holding a PhD, and today, on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, they share with us some reflections about their personal experiences and the role of women in science. Aya is currently a Research Associate and Lab. Manager and Anna is a Postdoc Researcher, both working on stem cell biology in skin and cornea.

    

When you found out that you wanted to be a scientist?

Aya: After my military service I was searching for the most interesting and suitable profession for me and decided to study Molecular Biochemistry. I found it very exciting to understand the basics of life.

Anna: Already in high school, I was interested in Biology and curious especially stem cells.

Have you encountered any kind of barriers to go in this direction from your family, friends or school?

Aya: Yes. My family encouraged me to pursue an engineering profession, like my father and my big brothers.

Anna: No, my family supported me throughout my entire career.

At some point did you think that being a woman could be a problem in achieving your dream?

Aya: No. I didn’t feel that being a woman is a problem.

Anna: I don’t think so, but the fact is that there are more men as PI than women.

Do you think that your daily/family life has somehow a negative impact on your work due to the fact of being a woman?

Aya: Yes, since I have three young children I find it very challenging to combine my work and my family life. The last year in which my children are at home most of the time due to the pandemic breakout was especially difficult.

Anna: Yes of course, I have a small baby who needs a lot of attention so I can’t work for long hours.

Do you think that initiatives like the International Day of Women and Girls in Science are useful/necessary to make the role of women in science visible?

We both see that in the last few years there is a change in the balance between men and women in senior positions in the Technion. More and more young female scientists get the opportunity to open their own labs and are found to be very successful. Any activity that may support this important change is blessed.

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. Then, I supervise data analysis and interpretation to decide what are the follow-up actions. In practice, at IBEC experiments are carried out by a team composed of two postdocs and one PhD student that I personally supervise.

What is the expected impact of the work you’re doing and of the project as a whole?

The project as a whole is expected to impact in the way the bioprinting process is conceived so far, aiming to improve the main drawbacks of current techniques, which either allow to have high resolution or high printing speed but not both at the same time. BRIGTHER concept will produce a new device based on light-sheet microscopy able to print skin tissue surrogates from custom made polymer materials. High speed printing impacts directly on the cell survival ability, one of the main problems of bioprinting techniques, while high resolution will allow to fine tune the geometry and mechanical properties of heterogeneous tissues such as skin. The work we are performing at IBEC will provide the working parameters of the customized “bioinks” to be successfully used with the BRIGTHER prototype.

In the context of bioprinting of human tissues, what are some of things you’ve found easy/challenging to work with?

Bioprinting human tissues that are functional is a challenging task. Cells have a limited life span when they are outside of their native matrix and are very sensitive to parameters such as shear forces applied. Time is then a crucial point for this task.

Do you have any lessons to share for the future?

I believe the future of bioprinted tissues will come from combining different technological approaches with finely tuned materials that will provide cells with the minimum number of signals sufficient for them to exploit their self-organization capabilities. It will be like mimicking developmental processes but starting with adult cells of the tissues instead of embryonic cells. Probably the use of cell-derived from organoids from adult tissues will be key in this process.

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Dr. Elena Martínez obtained her PhD in Physics at the University of Barcelona in 2001 and afterwards she moved to Switzerland to develop a postdoctoral research at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL). Back to Barcelona in 2003, her research was funded by one of the prestigious “Ramon y Cajal” Spanish grants at the PCB (Barcelona Science Park) where she was in charge of the technological infrastructure “Nanotechnology Platform”. In 2008 she joined the Nanobioengineering group at IBEC (Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia) as senior researcher, and from 2013 she leads her own research group at IBEC, the Biomimetic systems for cell engineering lab. Her research group aims to develop biomimetic systems combining engineering microfabrication technologies, tissue engineering and stem cell research. Currently, she is also Associate Professor at the Faculty of Physics from the University of Barcelona.

© F. Pampaloni, Goethe University Frankfurt, BRIGHTER, 2019

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.

Keywords

3D Bioprinting, engineering, tissues, Bioengineering, skin, health, Brighter Project, Europe

Link to the publication on Cordis

The partners have taken the opportunity to explain not only the role and responsibilities of everyone but also the main production and research lines of the project

The Kick-Off meeting of the EU project BRIGHTER (Bioprinting by light sheet lithography: engineering complex tissues with high resolution at high speed), an initiative led by Dr Elena Martinez from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Barcelona (IBEC), took place this week in Barcelona.

The event has brought together all the partners of the project, who have taken the opportunity to introduce themselves and explain their roles and responsibilities. The consortium members also presented the main production and research lines of the project and defined the work plan for the following months.

Among the beneficiaries of BRIGHTER we can find the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), that covers most bioengineering fields, from basic research to medical applications; the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences (BMLS) of the Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF), which is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular functions; the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, which is the Israel’s primary technological university; and the companies Mycronic and Cellendes, from Sweden and Germany, respectively.

Main Production and Research Lines

All the partners of BRIGHTER will work together until 2022 to make our lives easier. The researchers involved in this pioneering project aim to importantly assist, for example, those on the waiting list for a donor organ by developing the first 3D bioprinting system able to produce functional organs.

It is true that, in recent years, the number of donors has increased substantially, but lots keep dying every year while they wait for a kidney transplant or other kind of transplant. Given this scenario, find other ways to give someone a ‘second chance on life’ is fundamental, and BRIGHTER may have the key to all of this. Concretely, in the next three years the scientists will be focused on produce artificial organs by using 3D printers containing living cells with the purpose of compensate for the lack of organ donations and replace animal experiments.

For this, they will develop a top-down lithography method that will enable the researchers adjust the spatial structure and the stiffness with an unprecedented resolution to create the same heterogeneous microstructures that cells find in natural tissues.