Biomimetic systems for cell engineering, CIBER (IBEC)

We propose to combine engineering microfabrication technologies, tissue engineering concepts and advances in stem cell research to create cell culture microenvironments that will go beyond current 3D in vitro models. Resulting in vitro tissue equivalents aim at recapitulating in vivo cell functionality, cell renewal and migration, multicell-type differentiation and cell-matrix and cell-cell interactions. The cell culture platforms proposed will provide physiologically relevant and highly reproducible data, and they will be compatible with conventional cell culture assays and high-throughput testing.