A brand new analysis group on the College of Stuttgart is engaged on a research that includes 3D printing tissue straight contained in the human physique.
Led by Dr. Andrea Toulouse from the Institute of Utilized Optics, the challenge has obtained €1.8 million in funding from the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung (CZS) via its CZS Nexus program. This funding has allowed Dr. Toulouse to ascertain a junior analysis group centered on micro-optics and fiber-based 3D printing.
Named “3D Endoscopic Microfabrication” (3DEndoFab), the group started its work on October 1, 2025. It brings collectively two doctoral researchers from engineering and one from biotechnology, forming an interdisciplinary workforce that bridges optical know-how and the life sciences.
The analysis marks a step towards combining optical engineering with regenerative drugs, an space that might reshape how surgeons and clinicians strategy tissue restore. If profitable, the challenge may result in strategies that get rid of the necessity for invasive implantation procedures and allow on-site regeneration contained in the physique.
“Main my very own impartial junior analysis group permits me to advance endoscopic 3D printing with each accountability and freedom,” mentioned Dr. Toulouse.
Miniaturizing 3D printing for the human physique
Present 3D printing strategies can already create residing supplies equivalent to cartilage, muscle, or lung tissue utilizing light-based processes. But these strategies depend upon massive laboratory printers, which implies the printed tissue have to be implanted after manufacturing. The 3DEndoFab workforce needs to beat this limitation by growing instruments sufficiently small to print straight the place the tissue is required contained in the physique.
On the coronary heart of their work is the problem of miniaturization. The workforce goals to design a light-based 3D printing system able to working via an optical fiber, utilizing biocompatible supplies fairly than the non-degradable photoresists sometimes utilized in microfabrication.
One key goal is to create a microscopic optical aspect, roughly the scale of a grain of salt, that may sit on the tip of a fiber and exactly management mild to construct complicated, tissue-like buildings with micrometer accuracy.
Past tissue engineering, the researchers hope their strategy may supply new instruments for organic research, for instance to look at how cells develop and arrange themselves on finely structured surfaces.
The challenge builds on earlier outcomes from the EndoPrint3D challenge, during which Dr. Toulouse labored with Professors Alois Herkommer, Michael Heymann, and Harald Giessen to reveal that 3D printing via an optical fiber is feasible utilizing ultrashort femtosecond laser pulses.
Constructing on that basis, 3DEndoFab will discover which optical printing strategies are finest suited to biomedical use and the way such techniques may be made minimally invasive and reliable.
Dr. Toulouse’s group will work intently with Professor Heymann on the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomolecular Programs to deal with the organic points of the analysis. It is going to additionally participate within the Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (BITS) community inside Cyber Valley and contribute to the College of Stuttgart’s Biomedical Programs and Robotics for Well being initiative.
Having merged optics, engineering, and biology, 3DEndoFab goals to open the door to a future the place broken tissue could possibly be repaired or regenerated straight throughout the physique, utilizing mild to construct life on the smallest scales.
3D printing strikes inside residing techniques
What started as a solution to construct tissue outdoors the physique is now coming into the realm of residing techniques, as researchers discover methods to print buildings inside each cells and organs.
Researchers from the J. Stefan Institute and the College of Ljubljana achieved a scientific first by 3D printing purposeful microstructures inside residing cells straight utilizing a method referred to as two-photon polymerization. Of their experiments, a tiny droplet of photoresist was injected into HeLa cells, and a femtosecond 780 nm laser was used to solidify the fabric with submicron precision, creating buildings equivalent to microlasers, optical barcodes, and even a ten µm mannequin of an elephant.
Printed in arXiv, the method preserved cell integrity, with greater than half of the cells remaining viable and a few even dividing usually. This strategy demonstrated that complicated microdevices may be fabricated inside residing cells with out disrupting their pure features, opening new potentialities for learning and engineering organic techniques from the within.
Within the US, California Institute of Expertise (Caltech) researchers developed Deep Tissue In Vivo Sound Printing (DISP), a method that makes use of centered ultrasound to 3D print polymers inside residing tissues. The tactic relied on temperature-sensitive liposomes that launched crosslinking brokers when heated by ultrasound, inflicting polymer solidification exactly at focused websites.
Gasoline vesicles from micro organism acted as ultrasound distinction brokers to observe printing in actual time. Utilizing this strategy, the workforce printed drug-loaded hydrogels containing doxorubicin close to bladder tumors in mice, attaining larger tumor cell loss of life than normal drug injections and demonstrating potential for noninvasive, focused in-body fabrication.
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Featured picture reveals Andrea Toulouse and her workforce are researching high-resolution 3D printing utilizing light-based processes. The imaginative and prescient: To develop tiny 3D printers that can in the future be capable of construct organic tissue straight contained in the physique. Right here, laser mild is coupled into an optical fiber, whose glowing tip is meant to turn into a mini 3D printer. Photograph by way of College of Stuttgart / Uli Regenscheit.
