New Materials and Nanotechnologies for Bio-applications

New Materials and Nanotechnologies for Bio-applications

Pillar’s activities focus on the investigation of the interactions between living and artificial environments at the macro-, micro- and nano-scale. The comprehension of these mechanisms are exploited to realise innovative devices to take on and overcome currently unmet challenges in biotech and life science with specific but not exclusive application in personalized medicine and early-stage diagnostics.

Materials and Technologies for tissue and regenerative engineering.

In vitro environments and scaffolds for tissue engineering need to have a high physiological affinity with the living tissue and organs they intend to recapitulate. This goal, if achieved, will lead to more meaningful results, speeding up our understanding of biological processes, providing better tools for medical research and diagnostics/therapies and reducing the number of animals in research and development.

3D printing appears to be one of the key enabling technologies in this arena. Therefore, the pillar is exploring the use of different 3D printing techniques, ranging from 3D bioprinting combined with extrusion technology to Digital Light Processing, which uses visible light to form solid scaffolds through polymerisation. Specific projects will be focused on:

  • the production of 3D cell culture scaffolds, as component of in vitro organ models for drug testing under the umbrella of personalized medicine.
  • the development of biocompatible polymeric materials
  • microfluidic and organ-on-a-chip devices for personalized medicine
  • characterization of how cells and biomolecules interact with artificial environments (2D surfaces or 3D scaffolds) at the macro-, micro- and nano-scale.

Technologies exploiting organic/inorganic interactions for early detection of pathologies:

The activity is focused on the development of micro and nano fluidic devices for the label-free, multiplexed, non-destructive, chemically selective and spatially resolved analyses of cells, tissues and biofluids.

The goal is to develop new technologies for the realization of robust lab on chip point of care systems based on the principle of label free fingerprint for the detection of pathologies, e.g. cancer in particular.