The Lyon-headquartered company specialising in the development and production via 3D bioprinting of human skin models for the medical and cosmetic research has just received the Sanofi IDEA-Tech Award and a French grant to launch the SAFESKIN3D bioprinting project to revolutionize vaccine safety testing.
To that purpose, CTIBiotech and Sanofi build on their respective expertises to improve prediction of the safety, security and tolerance of mRNA vaccines in development.
The SAFESKIN3D project aims to make human skin injection sites with 3D bioprinting for better prediction of vaccine tolerance at early stages of development. It is expected to make it possible to model injection sites (subcutaneous and intramuscular) to screen hundreds of vaccine formulations a day without animal testing
Building on 9 years of R&D by CTIBiotech, it aims to develop sophisticated 3D human skin models that include epidermis, dermis, hypodermis, and muscle layers, and also integrate immune cells, sensory neurons, and vascular components to create a comprehensive model for safety testing. It will therefore providing a high-throughput, human-based testing platform that will help to reduce costs and development time.
In order to print human tissues in three dimensions, CTIBiotech uses bio-plotting or bio- extrusion techniques, which consist in extruding a bio-ink (a mixture of human skin cells suspended in a biocompatible gel) using pneumatic or mechanical bio-extrusion printers.
CTIBiotech was the first in the world to produce skin immunized by 3D bioprinting to measure the anti-inflammatory effects of active ingredients (collaboration with BASF), or skin containing artificial sebaceous glands (collaboration with Beiersdorf), skin with a vascular network (static, collaboration with Clariant), with melanocytes producing melanin and even by integrating hair follicles”).
CTIBiotech is investing 1 million euros in SAFESKIN 3D with additional 500k Euros grant funding by Sanofi (iDEA-TECH award), France 2030 award (French government, Region Auvergne Rhone Alpes) & Grant by Métropole de Lyon.
According to CTIBiotech, the project will create a unique world leading technical platform for development of more effective, safer and cost-optimized vaccines with the creation of up to 70 jobs by 2031.
