26 September, 2022

Poietis partnership – Bioprinting (Advanced Therapies)

THE UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA AND POIETIS ANNOUNCE THEIR PARTNERSHIP TO SET-UP A GMP-COMPLIANT BIOPRINTING FACILITY IN THE PRODUCTION AND VALIDATION CENTER FOR ADVANCED THERAPIES OF THE UNIVERSITY (CREATIO)

With the acquisition of the NGB (Next-Generation Bioprinting) high-resolution robotic bioprinting platform developed by Poietis the University of Barcelona becomes a reference in Tissue Engineering

Poietis will also support CREATIO team in the creation of tissues and organs, process development and validation

Barcelona, Spain and Pessac, France – September 26, 2022 – Poietis, a healthtech pioneer company in bioprinting, announced today the partnership with CREATIO, the Production and Validation Center for Advanced Therapies for the manufacture of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) of the University of Barcelona (UB) to install its NGB-C bioprinting platform in their cGMP facilities.

Bioprinting consists on the making of human artificial tissues through the combination of bio-materials and cells. This technology, which is part of the tissue engineering has brought a revolution in the pharmaceutical sector, with the creation of three-dimensional cellular models, and in the biomedical sector, focused on the generation of tissues and organs, for direct clinical applications.

Despite high clinical and commercial expectations, Tissue Engineering (TE) continues to face major challenges that impede the large-scale adoption of TE products in the market:

• The availability of automated manufacturing technologies,
• Complex logistics requiring a high level of coordination- the ability to offer patient-specific treatments (e.g. by integrating patient cells or anatomical information),
• Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit ratio with respect to existing therapies (drugs and medical devices) to support affordability and reimbursement. As a result, only a small number of TE products have obtained marketing authorization.

Thanks to its strong expertise in bioprinting and a proximity to physicians and cell biologists, Poietis specifically designed the Next-Generation Bioprinting (NGB) platform. The NGB-C platform is a unique solution to unmet needs that provides clinicians and patients with automated equipment that enables:

• Manufacture patient-specific tissues (taking into account biological complexity and custom design),
• Standardize the tissue manufacturing process (thus ensuring comparability and reproducibility of the process),
• Improve access to treatment (by robotising and enabling point-of-care manufacturing).

The NGB platform addresses critical limitations of existing tissue engineering methods and differentiates itself from current competing 3D bioprinting technologies through the use of high-resolution laser-assisted bioprinting. High-resolution bioprinting could be considered the next standard in tissue manufacturing, as it allows control of the internal tissue architecture and cellular microenvironment at the cellular scale with high cell viability, unlike other bioprinting technologies. NGB leads to a paradigm shift, in which bioprinting becomes cytocentric, no longer conditioned by the printing device (e.g. nozzle diameter), but driven by the laws of biology.

This installation comes after our first NGB platform installed at the Hospital of Marseille to prepare bioprinted skin clinical trials. The market of advanced therapies in Spain is one of the top ones in the world with a great development in cell therapy and gene therapy. CREATIO, located at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona, has become a leading center in Europe for its production of cell and gene therapies for different therapeutic applications. However, the lack of facilities to produce tissues for regenerative medicine is slowing the most ambitious developments. Therefore, NGB-C bioprinting platform will allow CREATIO, and the UB to be in the leading positions of regenerative medicine worldwide. CREATIO intends to use the NGB bioprinting platform in various collaborations in basic and translational research, as well as production of ATMPs for other hospitals in Spain.

The director of Creatio, Dr. Josep M. Canals, describes the acquisition of this bioprinter as an “important strategical step”. “Regenerative medicine and tissue engineering are providing great advances for producing tissues and organs in the laboratory, but we need one more step in the clinic so that these can be transplanted in humans. The new bioprinter in the CREATIO facilities will allow us to advance in the application of regenerative medicine for many diseases that go from skin regeneration to the nervous system regeneration strategies”.

Moreover, the rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia, congratulated the UB for its leading position in innovation in the field of health: “Innovation is part of the University of Barcelona’s DNA. This milestone is important for placing the UB at the front of tissue regenerative medicine, since there is only one bioprinter with such features in the world”. With this acquisition, the University of Barcelona will contribute to the definite clinical application of artificial production of tissues and organs, providing direct benefits to Society.

“The installation of NGB-C bioprinting platform in a center such as CREATIO at UB is an important milestone for Poietis and is in line with our vision to bring a 3D bioprinter in every hospital! That is a closer step to bring bioprinting technology for the patients“, says Fabien Guillemot, President and Founder of Poietis.

Bruno Brisson, Co-founder and Business Development Director at Poietis concluded: “We are delighted to partner with UB and CREATIO to establish this bioprinting facility at the forefront of innovation. We will be supporting CREATIO team in process development and validation as well and that opens up new opportunities and case studies for new clinical applications for bioprinting This partnership is also a concrete step of the market adoption of our offer in order to expand capabilities of Cell & Gene Therapy Centers to bioprinting and enable them to produce implantable Tissue Engineered products”.