First steps towards an integrated biomaterial risk assessment testing system

The PANBioRA consortium aims to develop a testing system integrating different technologies into a single instrument that will be able to perform multiple analyses on cell and micro-tissue levels. PANBioRA’s testing system will provide an improved, faster and cheaper assessment of biomaterials. Better clinical outcomes for implants as well as savings in healthcare costs are potential impacts of the novel PANBioRA system.

The scientific coordinator Dr. Nihal Engin Vrana from Protip Medical is excited about the work performed during the first six months of the project, “We have already reached significant advances in different aspects of the system, such as the testing of several in silico systems for investigating biomaterial/macrophage interactions or the development of a first demonstrator of the mini-microscope.” Integrating mini-microscopes into the system allows live stream data acquisition of the different testing methods. The microscope, developed by the department of Computer Engineering at TOE EPOKA University allows magnifications from 7x to 70x and real time monitoring of cellular behaviour and cell viability.

In the following 6 months, the work in the project will concentrate on the design of the initial integrated systems, particularly the automated cytotoxicity test and connected organ-on-a-chip system. These are important steps towards reaching the final goal of developing a system integrating testing method on nano-, micro- and miliscale level. Potentially, it will be possible to test first clinical samples with Mimotope Variance Analysis (MVA) which is a propriety technology of Protobios as authorization for the clinical trial part of the project has already been obtained by Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège. Above that, a stakeholder community will be built under the coordination of Steinbeis Advanced Risk Technologies GmbH in Stuttgart with the aim to identify and evaluate needs and expectations with respect to the development of a risk governance framework for biomaterials which will result in the PANBioRA Risk Radar at the end of the project.

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