News, events, publications, jobs and more...

In addition to our post of the 1st of December last year (see below), you will find here the presentation document of the conference.

On January 27, the webinar of the Hépatinov FHU (Hospital-University Federation) run by Prof. Duclos-Vallée will be about "Pluripotent and organoid stem cells for the study of liver diseases".
It will be moderated by Ludovic Vallier from the University of Cambridge, one of the international experts in organoids and more particularly hepatic organoids.
You can join the seminar by clicking on the image below:

On January 27, the next edition of the virtual meetings of the FSSCR (French Society for Stem Cell Research) will answer the question "How far can brain organoid research go?" and will be moderated by Sergiu Pasca of Stanford University, one of the internationally renowned experts in the field of neuronal organoids.
Registration is free but compulsory by clicking on the image below:

The 2021 session of the "Frontiers of stem cell and organoid technology" seminar will be held from Monday the 25th to Thursday the 28th of January by video conference.

The seminar aims at fostering the cooperation between French and Japanese researchers and is organized in particular by Maxime Mahé (Inserm, University of Nantes) and member of the Scientific Council of the IFBF.

You will find the seminar program by following this link and can register here (free but compulsory registration).

A recent article published in the journal Hepatology reports on the progress of protocols for differentiating stem cells into hepatocytes. Human pluripotent stem cells can be amplified indefinitely and differentiated into any type of cell. But the liver cells obtained after differentiation have more foetal characteristics than adult ones. New technologies have been used to improve the differentiation process in recent years. They give hope for promising clinical applications.

The article was written by E. Luce and A. Messina under the supervision of A. Dubart-Kupperschmitt and JC Duclos-Vallée, members of the IFBF and involved in the iLite project.

It will be available soon through this link.

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is one of the few European centers specializing in biofabrication.
IBEC recently uploaded a video of a webinar hosted by one of its research directors, Xavier Trepat, devoted to the mechanobiology of intestinal organoids (traction, pressure, constriction).
The video can be seen here.

“Industrial and clinical applications of research on biomaterials” was the theme of the presentation by Didier Letourneur, director of the Laboratory for Vascular Translational Science and member of the Scientific Council of IFBF on the occasion of the 2nd scientific day of the Institute for Research on Medicines and Therapeutic Innovation (IRMIT, Université Paris-Saclay).
From an Egyptian artificial toe (2300 BC) to porous polysaccharide matrices and their preclinical testing (heart, liver, brain, bone repairs; vascular engineering; biofabricated skin; drug delivery system ...), the benefits of biomaterials research are increasingly promising.
Didier Letourneur's presentation (in French) can be downloaded here.

GoLiver Therapeutics, a member of IFBF, received on November 25 the Seal of Excellence from the European Commission within the framework of Horizon H2020-EIC Accelerator for its GotoMars phase 1 clinical trial targetting the treatment of acute hepatic insufficiency using differentiated pluripotent stem cells. This project was developed in collaboration with hospitals including the Hepato-Biliary Center, also a member of IFBF.

The “label of excellence” is a quality label awarded to project proposals submitted for funding under Horizon 2020, the EU's framework program for research and innovation.

The European Society for Artificial Organs (EASO), a worldwide association for the promotion of tissue & organ support and regeneration by artificial organ technology, the Tissue Engineering and RegenerativeMedecine International Society (TERMIS) for the advancement of the science and technology of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine and the Health Research Institute of Aragon (IIS Aragon) organize an online winter school on February 24-26, 2021: “The Bionic Human: Biomaterials, (Bio)Artificial and Bioengineered Organs, and Cybernetics for the Future of Regenerative Medicine”.

Pr Duclos-Vallée, Chairman of IFBF and Cécile Legallais, a member of the Scientific Committee of IFBF will discuss bio-artificial organs.

You can consult the program of the winter school here.

Dear Madam, dear Sir,

The French Institute of BioFabrication welcomes your interest in biofabrication, a new scientific field in healthcare with a future.

IFBF exists thanks to its volunteers but also thanks to the generosity of its donors.

We submit this document to your attention hoping to benefit from your generosity.

Best regards,

The Executive Board

 - Your donation entitles you to a significant tax reduction -

On November 3, Californian voters went to the polls to choose their next President of the Union but also to vote on several bills. They approved Proposal 14 of a 30-year, $ 5.5 billion funding for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine - CIRM. This funding takes over from the initial funding to the tune of $ 2.7 billion since the creation of the institute in 2004.
CIRM funds technical infrastructures and stem cell research in California, including organoid manufacturing, organ-on-chip development, bioprinting and more generally biofabrication.
Read the press release here.

The Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medecine (OIRM), founded in 2014 and funded by the Canadian government, brings together more than 250 researchers from the province of Ontario specialized in stem cell culture and biofabrication (skin, heart muscle, etc.) .

Responsible for promoting the results of the research from OIRM, the Center for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) is a project accelerator specializing in regenerative medicine, cell therapy and gene therapy. Funding is provided by the Canadian government and the Province of Ontario. It has a 40,000 ft² platform located in Toronto, a quarter of which meets the requirements of Good Manufacturing Practices-GMP.

CCRM plans with the innovation park of Hamilton, the third largest city in the province, to build a "biomanufacturing campus" specializing in regenerative medicine around what will be the largest Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) of Canada (see the press release here).

Canada is thus asserting its ambitions in regenerative medicine, bioproduction and biofabrication.

(an artist's view of the biomanufacturing campus)

Contemporary society attributes significant merits to innovation, especially in the field of health. Medical innovation is supposed to increase lifespan, improve the quality of life and generate significant economic benefits.

This is all the more the case for so-called disruptive innovations, including biofabrication, the results of which are considered a priori to be very promising.

However, experience shows that "there is often only a step between disruption and sensationalism" and a legitimate question is asked: "Does a drug that is effective but inaccessible because too expensive constitute real progress? "

In a recent note, Inserm's Ethics Committee questions innovations in their definition, the means of evaluating them and orienting their production according to their characteristics.

The Committee's note, in French, can be downloaded (here) or viewed on the Inserm website (here).

In addition, the 7th edition of the annual Inserm Ethics Committee meeting, on November 25, will be dedicated to this theme. To register, follow this link.

Researchers from Inserm UMR_S1193 at Paul Brousse Hospital in Villejuif led by Anne Dubart-Kupperschmitt (see here), member of the IFBF Scientific Committee, have shown, as part of the iLite University Hospital Research project ( innovations in Liver tissue engineering), that induced human pluripotent cells (hiPSCs) could be differentiated into cholangiocytes capable of self-assembly to form bile tubes in a three-dimensional culture system. The active transport of a fluorescent bile acid analog has shown the functionality of the tubes formed, demonstrating the potential of these structures in a bioconstruction approach.

The article detailing the protocol appeared last July in Methods in Cell Biology volume 159 (see here).

The team with Prof. Duclos-Vallée, scientific manager of the iLite project

The “Quotidien du Médecin” reports in an article published on September 8 (see here) of its interviews with several organoid specialists, in particular Anne Dubart-Kupperschmitt, member of the IFBF Scientific Council (see here) and Jean-Charles Duclos-Vallée, president of the Institute (see here).

Researchers and clinicians have highlighted the great interest that organoids represent for the understanding of diseases (currently Covid-19, see our post of June 26), the development of new molecules, the regeneration of tissues and the transplantation of organs. They also mentioned the challenges they face, that of vascularity in the first place.

Particular emphasis has been placed on liver organoids capable of reproducing large numbers of organ functions, the total of which exceeds 500. The article ends with the mention of the test on small animals of a hepatic bioreactor, one of the objectives of the iLite project (see here).

After Nature (see the news dated June 26, 2020), the New York Times echoes the use of tissue engineering, and in particular bioprinting, to test pharmaceutical molecules.

The New York Times open access article can be viewed here or on the newspaper's website here.

KFC, the fast-food chain, announced that it is taking a new step towards its “restaurant of the future” by targeting the production of chicken meat by bio-printing. KFC has just signed a cooperation agreement with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a Russian company that gained recognition in 2018 by testing its technology on board the International Space Station. The partners set themselves the goal of biofabricated chicken "nuggets"the appearance and taste of which will be as close as possible to those of the original product. The first biofabricated "nuggets" will be available this fall.

KFC's press release is available here.

Launched at the initiative of IFBF in 2017, the course session "Tissue and organ bioengineering" of the doctoral school "Therapeutic innovation - from the fundamental to the applied" of Paris-Saclay University could not be held in April due to the covid-19 crisis.

It will be held on Monday the 21st, Wenesday the 23rd and Thursday the 24th of September 2020 as a webinar.

Experts from many health, education and research institutions,

• both French (AP-HP, CEA, Ecole Polytechnique, IFBF, Inserm, Institut Pasteur, Institut de la Vision, IRBA, Université Paris-Saclay, UTC),
• and foreign (Health Sciences Institute in Aragon) 

as well as from a company (Sanofi),

will present the many specialties contributing to the new discipline of biofabrication:

• cell and organoid culture,
• matrices and "scaffolds",
• bio-printing,
• organs-on-a-chip,
• bio-artificial extracorporeal systems,
• regulatory, economic and ethical aspects.

Please read the detailed program here.

Dean Kamen, the creator of the Segway, founded the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute, a non-profit organization with approximately 170 members, companies and academic research institutions and endowed with $ 300 million.

His objective is "to collect extraordinary people that have different backgrounds, that probably don’t interact now, but if they did would dramatically accelerate the path to a major breakthrough.” in order to manufacture  replacement organs in the next 10 years.

The article from the web publication OneZero is available on its website here or downloadable here.

Organoids are three-dimensional multicellular structures that partially replicate the anatomy of an organ in vitro. They represent an essential field of research in biofabrication. They can be the basic building blocks for making a tissue or bioartificial organ. They are also very useful tools for understanding illnesses and developing their treatments.

This article published in Nature relates the use of lung, but also kidney, liver anc intestine, organoids in the study of COVID-19, especially in the case of its most serious cases. Likewise, these organoids greatly facilitate the initial toxicology tests with a view to developing a treatment.

The article from Nature, freely accessible, can be read on the journal's website here, or downloadable here.

Research on brain development in the embryo involves many teams. That of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with biotechnology engineers from the University of Lund in Sweden, publishes in Nature Biotechnology an article proposing a model based on a microfluidic system. The use of this technology lays the foundations for the use of 3D tissues for toxicological analysis.

The press release from the University of Copenhagen is available here.

The link to the article is here.

To illustrate our last post dated April 18 about the note of the thematic think tank of the Inserm ethics committee on the ethical issues of the research on organoids, we put online this short video of Nantes University and Inserm showing the production of intestinal organoids (in French).

The organoid construction technique is one of the pillars of biofabrication. Organoids are research tools on biological processes and in particular the interaction of cells within an organ.

A thematic think-tank of the Inserm ethics committee examined the ethical issues of research on organoids. Anne Dubart-Kupperschmitt (UMR_S 1193), responsible for two “work-packages” of the iLite project (innovation in Liver tissue engineering - see here) was one of them. Among those interviewed, Jean-Charles Duclos-Vallée (see here), iLite scientific coordinator and chairman of the French Institute of BioFabrication.

We resume below the key points of the note from the working group:

• What characterizes an organoid as such is that it performs certain functions specific to the organ of which it is the organoid
• Organoids organize themselves, spontaneously
• An organoid does not have the same properties and functions as the organ. It is therefore not correct to speak of organoids as mini-organs

• Organoids are research tools that have no application in therapy yet
• It is not always well established that organoids are a good model for the diagnosis and evaluation of therapies
• The current lack, in most cases,of vascularity and / or innervation of these models produced in vitro is a limit which can pose serious problems

• What moral value should be given to living things consideredas a set of parts to be assembled?
• We observe the transitionfrom a natural order to an artificial order, namely theengineering of the living which for some is morally problematic in that it denotes an inappropriate attitude on our part
• Currently, there is no legal standard governing organoids which would make it possible in particular to determine with certainty who is the “owner” or “custodian” of this biological element.

• Science must guarantee a critical approach exercising vigilant control over its own forward-looking advances and committing to promise nothing that cannot be acted upon

Concerning the particular case of brain organoids (cerebroids):

• Characteristics such as sensitivity or awareness are crucial to define the moral status of cerebroids as well as that of any individualbeing
• The meaning given to the terms "emotion" and "consciousness" is essential for understanding the moral status of cerebroids
• If an electrical activity as such cannot be equivalent to consciousness or sensitivity, it cannot be excluded that an entity made up of neurons experiencesmental states since there are correlation and even causal relationshipsbetween mind or spirit and the brain
• Consciousness refers to a "network of consciousness" which is based on the brain's ability to maintain coherent brain dynamics. Thus it is the synchronization and the coherence of the interactions between the areas of the brain, condition not presently present at the level of the cerebroids in vitro, which makes it possible to be aware
• The identification of the means available to tacklethe issueof the moral status of animals in which human cerebroids will be transplanted must be considered in concrete terms

The text of the note from the Inserm ethics committee working group can be downloaded here and is available on HAL (open multidisciplinary archive) here or directly on the Inserm website here.

Launched at the initiative of IFBF in 2017, the course session "Tissue and organ bioengineering" of the doctoral school "Therapeutic innovation - from the fundamental to the applied" of Paris-Saclay University will be held on April 22, 23 and 24, 2020.

Experts from many health, education and research institutions,

• both French (AP-HP, CCML, CEA, Centrale-Supélec, Ecole Polytechnique, ENS Paris-Saclay, IFBF, Inserm, INSA, Institut Pasteur, Institut de la Vision, IRBA, INTS, Université Paris-Saclay, UTC),
• and foreign (Health Sciences Institute in Aragon, University of Edinburgh, Leuven, Tokyo, Twente),
• as well as companies (Biopredic, Cyprio, GoLiver, Sanofi, Treefrog),

will present the many specialties contributing to the new discipline of biofabrication:

• cell and organoid culture,
• matrices and "scaffolds",
• bio-printing,
• organs-on-a-chip,
• bio-artificial extracorporeal systems,
• preclinical and clinical applications,
• regulatory, economic and ethical aspects.

Please read the detailed program here.