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Thursday, 29 June 2017 11:41

New InVitro + Jobs research group: Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology Featured

Today, InVitroJobs has welcomed a new work group on its platform: the research team for micro- and biosystem engineering at Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden. The scientists develop and optimize microphysiological systems to mimic the organ physiology of the human body in multi-organ chips to replace animal experiments. The research database of the InVitro+Jobs portal has reached nearly 280
groups.

The cultivation of cells and tissues on rigid surfaces, e.g. in petri dishes does not provide the necessary environment and stimuli, as it is naturally the case in the human body. In the meantime researchers know that cells must be exposed to certain environmental stimulations in order to develop important properties.

As a result, compare to primary tissues and living organisms cell systems developed without a suitable environment would be applicable only limited as an alternative to animal experiments. Science has been working for a long time to provide this developing environment for cultivated cells, which has to be as close as possible to the real situation in the human body.
 
The research team of micro- and biosystems engineering, headed by Dr. Frank Sonntag, offers various technical possibilities to simulate this environment. This includes, beneath temperature regulation, certain pressures, currents or gradients, as occur in the body initiated by blood flows.

The offer ranges from the production of multi-organ chips with multilayer channels and culture chambers for a cultivation of different tissues in a circulation system as well as integrated pneumatically controlled micropumps and microvalves to the development of a device platform for multi-organ chips or, where applicable, portal robotics system for a fully automated long-term measurement in a high-throughput process.

The work group also provides a platform technology for perfusion of 3d-printed organoids. In cooperation with partners 3d rapid prototyping is currently developed. The 3d rapid prototyping will be used to construct bio-compatibel scaffolds on which cells are able to grow. This is currently the state-of-the-art method of overcoming disadvantages resulting from the organoid culture in a pure spherical form. Here, the Fraunhofer Institute IWS is open for cooperation with new partners.

Users of their developments are companies that want to test their chemical substances in vitro with organ-chips as well as scientists from the field of basic research, for instance to investigate the interactions of different cell types of the human body as well as to study the signal transduction mechanisms.
 
Further information:
http://www.iws.fraunhofer.de/de/geschaeftsfelder/mikrotechnik/mikro-biosystemtechnik.html
http://www.iws.fraunhofer.de/de/geschaeftsfelder/mikrotechnik/mikro-biosystemtechnik/produkte_projekte/perfusions-mikrobioreaktorsystem.html
https://www.compamed.de/

also interesting:
Patching, S.G. (2014): Surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy for the characterization of membrane protein-ligand interactions and its potential for Drug discovery. Review. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1838: 43-55. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005273613001466