Market-ready: these printed ensors replaceanimal experiments

The delicate subject “animal experiments” deals with animal welfare, pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies alike. A German company is now delivering the market-ready solution. What is the new “BioChip”, can be summarized here.

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The efficacy of novel drugs for the treatment of infectious diseases is increasingly being investigated using modern measurement methods. Best example: Real-time monitoring of living human cells. In this way, according to the Fraunhofer Institute, animal experiments can be reduced to a minimum and the meaningfulness for the effect in the patient can be increased.

A research team led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Technology IBMT has now achieved a milestone in the BMBF-funded BIOGRAPHY project. For the first time living cells were examined with the help of printed graph sensors.

The Biotech company cellasys is responsible for the specification and characterization of the sensors in the project and has now been able to electronically read out the growth behavior of connective tissue cells on the graph structures using the IMOLA technology.

To achieve this, the scientists had to develop a new graphintete and optimize the printing process. The fact that the microstructures are stable and biocompatible were confirmed in advance in the project since 2014.

The BioChips of the cellasys have so far mainly been used in medical research. Thanks to the new printing technology, these can now be produced much more favorably. As a result, they are now suitable for industrial applications, such as the research and development of active ingredients for the control of viral infectious diseases.

Applications for area-wide water monitoring are also conceivable. The research project is to be completed in 2017 with a parallelized version of the measurement setup and a series of experiments.

Cover picture source: Evernine GmbH

Picture source: Ryan MCGuire via Gratispgraphy