New research from The University of Queensland aims to improve cell-based tissue generation and organization in the lab.

Mark Allenby, a chemical engineer at the University of Queensland’s School of Chemical Engineering, wants to improve the manufacturing process for future agricultural, pharmaceutical, or medical products and reduce costs by developing more robust and scalable cell culture platforms.

An Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award will allow the team to investigate how to shape the formation of lab-grown tissue by 3D printing dynamic structures that control the behavior of cells.

Cell cultures are used in a wide range of industries, from the production of beer during the fermentation process to the development of vaccines and medical grafts and implants.

To make matters worse, when cells are cultured in a lab, they are typically diluted and spread out over a large volume of liquid.

Unlike the body’s natural process of cell-to-cell communication, this is not what occurs here.

A football field’s worth of cell culture flasks and thousands of liters of cell culture media would be needed to produce a small amount of lab-grown tissue.

Controlling cell growth at tissue density would have a significant impact on biomanufacturing, including lower costs.”

University of Queensland’s School of Chemical Engineering’s Dr. Mark Allenby

In a recent interview, Dr. Allenby stated that his recent work on developing better cell cultures to produce red blood cells for blood transfusion proved the value of the concept.

Our cell cultures were over 100 times more cost-efficient per red blood cell produced when grown at tissue density, according to our findings.

He explained that the goal of this project was to investigate how micro-confinement 3D printing could be used to control and engineer tissue formation at a micro scale.

With the help of QUT, we’ve created tiny chambers that can contain cell growth in a specific shape and geometries, which will allow us to study the mechanical forces of confining cell growth and how it shapes the way tissue forms over time,” he explained.

“In order to produce patterns and different types of tissue at a large scale, we’ll use the power of creating gradients in nutrient concentration.

It will also be investigated how to produce large, vascularized tissue in a way that is physiologically significant. “””