About the project

Why PRISM-LT?

Recent advances in cell engineering combined with additive manufacturing have created new possibilities in bioprinting engineered living materials. However, the balance between printability and functionality remains a massive challenge.

Participation on engineered living materials

The PRISM-LT project plans to contribute to the development of the field by designing an adaptable platform for 3D bioprinting living tissue based on hybrid living materials with multiple predictable dynamic functionalities, shapes, and scales.

The success of engineered living materials depends on moving beyond proof-of-concept, solving scale-up challenges, and creating a collaborative community.


Innovative approach

Tissue typically develops as stem cells interact with their physical and chemical microenvironments. They probe for and respond to signals that lead to their differentiation towards a specific lineage, such as bone, muscle, or adipose tissue.

PRISM-LT will hijack this natural mechanism to engineer 3D printable living materials that can build themselves into complex living tissues.

The project aims to create a new bio-ink and set a symbiotic relationship between stem cells and engineered helper microorganisms. The team will test this approach on two symbiotic materials designed for biomedical and food applications.

Close-up of 3D printer bio printing a squared piece of tissue on a Petri dish.

Chemical guidance for long term-commitment

Depending on the application, the PRISM-LT’s bioink will include engineered helper microorganisms—bacteria or yeast—that can produce in-situ relevant growth factors for chemical guidance. They will support the long-term differentiation of stem cells towards a specific lineage required by the process for consolidation.

Helper microorganisms produce growth factors for muscle (yeast), bone (bacteria) or fat (yeast and bacteria).

Long-term viability and robustness

Production of living tissues can be time-consuming. PRISM-LT plans to optimise it by designing self-regulating tissues for long-term stability.

The helper microorganisms remain active only during a limited time window and react only to the early hints from stem cells that have started differentiation. Otherwise, they stay inactive so as not to interfere with the ongoing tissue development.

This switch mechanism limits the impact of unwanted proliferation and genetic instability, leading to more robust and consistent outcomes.

Differentiated fat cell, which originally started as a stem cell, surrounded by inactive yeast and bacteria

Heterogeneous tissues of complex structure and function

The end goal of the PRISM-LT platform is to bioprint heterogeneous 3D living structures that mimic complex interfaces in specialised human tissues.

The printing process will computationally lay bioink in patterned areas to emulate these complex systems. The platform will focus on the interfaces between bone/fat and muscle/fat at all relevant scales, from sub-millimetre to centimetre.

Demonstrating these results is at the core of the project’s two main applications: biomedicine and food production.


Applications

The team will test the project’s platform with two independent symbiotic materials targeting biomedical and food applications, benchmarking the platform to its broadest scope.

It will incorporate bacteria or yeast helper cells and address two different interfaces: bone-fat, concerning biomedical applications, and muscle-fat, given an industrial methodology to produce the marbling of meat associated with intramuscular fat.

Researcher with gloves takes out a petri dish from a bioprinter to look at what was printed.

Tissue engineering in biomedicine

The platform will be a tool to create hybrid organoids as in-vitro models for pre-clinical research.

The possibility of manufacturing standardised organoids and tissues from multipotent stem cells is of interest to pharmaceutical and medical parties: it could facilitate personalised medicine through drug discovery, testing, and cell engineering therapies.

Alternative meat products

Cultured meat, a recent and fast-growing economic sector, promises a more sustainable food source by replacing livestock with the industrial production of stem cell-based tissue. Still, most synthetic meat fails to reproduce the natural marbling created by the interface between muscle and fat.

The PRISM-LT platform will address these shortcomings by enabling the engineering of marble meat incorporating all its natural features, e.g., typical marbling, texture, nutritious values, safety, etc.


Bioprinter photos by Philip Ezze are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.