Ioannis Papantoniou is currently an Associate Professor at KU Leuven. He is the Head of the Tissue Engineering Lab of the Skeletal Biology and Engineering Research Centre, Department of Development & Regeneration, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven. He is also Director of Prometheus, the translational division for Skeletal Tissue Engineering of Leuven R&D, the TTO of KU Leuven. He has obtained his Chemical Engineering Degree from the University of Patras (2003) and his PhD on Biochemical Engineering from UCL, London (2008) as an IKY scholar. He is member of the TERMIS EU and BELSACT research society councils. He is currently leading a team of 10 PhD and 2 Postdocs and has published more than 85 scientific journal manuscripts (including Nature Comms, Cell Stem Cells, Advanced science, Nature Reviews in Bioengineering) and holds 3 patents. His research activities have been supported by numerous grants from international (H2020, Interreg), National (FWO, RegmedXB) and institutional (Internal KU Leuven funds) sources.
Τίτλος παρουσίασης: Scalable manufacture of programmable organoid-based tissue implants through the merger of bioprinting, bioreactor and robotics technologies
Περίληψη: The past decade has seen an unparalleled growth in the field of organoid-based biosystems, where cells and organoids act as therapeutic agents to treat and cure disease and regenerate trauma. Organoid-based implants is a new and rapidly growing subcategory of Tissue Engineered Products & Regenerative Medicine, and are classified by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). To date only 4 such products have obtained marketing authorization and out of these, 2 have been withdrawn due to limitations in reimbursement and manufacturing capabilities, which have been reported as major bottlenecks for all ATMPs.
Organoid technologies enable the embedding of programmable biological mechanisms of action due to their potential to closely recapitulate innate developmental and regenerative biological programs. This increases the potential to obtain in vitro measurements with deterministic meaning that can be then used as biomarkers of tissue functionality. Organoid microtissues can thus be seen as robust living building blocks that can be used for the production of larger Tissue Engineered ATMPs bottom-up. In our lab we have been developing novel skeletal organoids for the regeneration of bone and osteochondral defects using diverse cells sources (both adult progenitor cells as well as induced pluripotent stem cells). However, the production of such engineered tissues is still carried out through manual protocols with lack of proper monitoring and absence of control capabilities. In addition scalabilitys and control of these processes is still suboptimal leading to batch failures. In order to address these challenges, fully automated and streamlined biomanufacturing processes enabling robust and reproducible ATMP production needs to be developed.
In his talk, Ioannis Papantoniou will discuss how advancements in the development of biologically programmable organoid modules results in implants with enhanced functionality regenerating challenging skeletal defects. Moreover the development of novel automated technologies such as bioreactors and bioprinters enabled to the establishment of a novel end-to-end automated tissue factory which is currenty operational. This merger of advancements in biology and engineering paves the way for fully automated, scalable and high precision manufacture of highly complex tissues for patients in need.