Our project
A bioprinted pancreas for personalized medicine and to study new therapies against diabetes
With the advances in the 3D printing of living cells, new horizons emerge in medical research and treatments. Bioprinting of human tissues could be used to produce better models for testing the safety and efficacy of new drugs in laboratory settings, as well as for regenerative medicine. But in order to achieve this goal, the challenge is to guide the printed tissues to mature and to acquire the function of actual organs.
For this reason, the EU-funded ENLIGHT project will develop a groundbreaking technological solution that combines 3D printing, photonics and synthetic biology, to build a bioprinted pancreas to test and develop new therapies against diabetes.
Expected Outcomes
- An effective route to produce endocrine pancreatic organoids from patient-specific stem cells
- Hydrogels for pancreatic cell culture and bioprinting
- Development of a novel ultra-fast volumetric bioprinter
- Centimeter-scale vascularized pancreatic tissues to be used as in vitro model to replace animal testing in pharmacological research
- Proof-of-concept of in vivo function of the bioprinted pancreas
Expected Impact
The results and the technologies from ENLIGHT will impact drug testing, regenerative medicine, and personalized medicine, involving patient-specific cells. Moreover, the ENLIGHT technology will be adopted by European research infrastructures for disciplines like biology, materials science, stem cell research, pharmacological research, advanced therapies, additive manufacturing.
Acceleration of drug discovery and reduction in the costs of drug development and healthcare.
The increasing expense of drug development is a major contributor to today’s skyrocketing healthcare costs. Spending on drug development has increased over the past 20 years while the number of drugs approved annually has declined. Today it takes nearly 1.8 billion euros and 10–12 years on average to develop one clinically applicable drug. Two thirds of the total drug development costs are spent in the clinical trial stage. To curb the cost of drug development, it is pivotal to improve the predictive power of preclinical screening to remove ineffective candidates as early as possible. Current in vitro models cannot capture the 3D complexity of native organs, while animal models are poorly reproducible and often not representative of human physiology. Due to limitations in current testing, only 10% of drugs from preclinical research reaches the clinic, with estimated losses of 85% of research funds invested in drug discovery. Although variable, these rates are similar across most diseases, including pancreatic diseases like diabetes types I and II. Notably, recent estimates indicate that if better models to accurately predict drug toxicity alone were available, the amount of drugs approved after clinical trials would reach ≈56%. Thus, the new ENLIGHT 3D in vitro models are urgently needed. In the drug discovery chain, the models will initially be used in the preclinical phase, first complementing and finally replacing animal testing. Hence, ENLIGHT will directly contribute to narrow the pool of candidate drugs entering clinical trials. This will increase the success rate of translation to the market and clinics, while decreasing expenditure, and the ethical concerns of unsuccessful human trials.
Improved healthcare
Accelerating drug development will bring improved and increased therapeutic options to address the needs of patients and improve their quality of life. Moreover, ENLIGHT takes a key step towards a new generation of lab-made human tissues with organ-like functionality. While further research will be required to address i.e. degradation profile, immune-response to the printed tissues, GMP production and regulatory approval, these bioprinted tissues will have the potential to change the face of modern-day medicine as transplantable, regenerative grafts. These will impact on the life of patients that are currently waiting for an organ transplant. In the context of diabetes (explored as proof-of-concept in ENLIGHT), this will pave the way to overcome insulin dependence.
Reduced use of animals for medicine testing and fundamental research
ENLIGHT offers a technology to generate reliable in vitro models to reduce the use of animal experiments. In 2019, more than 9 million animals were used in Europe for scientific research, education, and safety and efficacy testing of novel entities. Of these, around 23% were used for regulatory requirements12. Due to the lack of realistic 3D in vitro models, drug testing, but also basic biological research, are partly carried out on animals, although these have limited ability to mimic human physiology. The pancreas model from ENLIGHT enables drug testing with enhanced reproducibility and offers a new tool to study human pancreas biology, aiding to reduce and replace animal models in compliance with the 3Rs principle (Replace, Reduce, Refine). This goal will be even more at grasp, after using the technology to print other tissues as a follow-up to the project, and to even connect multiple tissue types via the printed vascular network.
Potential for market creation
ENLIGHT produces a new type of bioprinter. The production and commercialisation of this bioprinter, will place European industry and research in a vantage point in the new, expanding 3D bioprinting market, which is expected to grow from 0.59 to 1.6 billion € worldwide (2019 to 2024). Moreover, the hydrogels developed in ENLIGHT, will open a market niche as customisable bioresins for the printer, but also as biomaterials for 3D cell culture. The 3D cell culturing market is expected to grow from 0.53 to 2.85 billion € (2019 to 2026; compound annual growth rate ≈22%). Within this, the highest share is represented by biomaterial-based 3D culture (47.2% in 2018). This growth is attributed to the ability of biomaterial-based products to better mimic in vivo conditions thus driving their adoption among end users. Finally, the bioprinted organoids used as advanced in vitro models for drug testing, will open a new opportunity in the drug development market, expected to reach a value of 8.59 billion € by 2023. Overall, these data indicate a favourable ecosystem for the commercial exploitation of the results of ENLIGHT and for their ability to create new niches in fast, growing markets with strategic importance for European industry. Thus, ENLIGHT will strengthen the European market for bioprinting and enhance competitiveness of the biomaterials and biomedical industries.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 964497.
