Basque Country’s 3D bioprinter for the pharmaceutical industry  

UPV/EHU and TECNALIA commission the Basque Country’s first 3D bioprinter for the pharmaceutical industry, with the financial support of Alava Provincial Council

• It is part of a pioneering project, APD-Advance Pharma Development, which will enable the development of personalised therapies in the paediatric field, healthy ageing, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.
• The bioprinter will enable three-dimensional organ and tissue structures and pharmaceutical forms to be produced, using additive manufacturing technologies.
• The Deputy General of Alava, Ramiro González, the Vice-Deputy General of Alava and Regional Deputy for Economic Development and Territorial Balance, Pilar García de Salazar, the Vice-Rector of the Alava Campus, Manoli Igartua, and the Director of Strategy, Market and Technology at TECNALIA, Agustín Sáenz, visited the facilities today and saw the new technologies.

Vitoria-Gasteiz, 17 March 2023. The Basque Country’s first high performance multifunctional 3D bioprinter has already created its first medicines and biological prototypes. The NanoBioCel research group at the University of the Basque Country and the TECNALIA research and technological development centre are at the forefront of this pioneering project, APD-Advance Pharma Development, which has the support of Alava Provincial Council, and which will enable the development of personalised therapies, especially in the paediatric field, healthy ageing, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, in order to provide a service to the pharmaceutical industry and the health sector.

This morning, the Lascaray Research Centre facilities on the Alava Campus of the UPV/EHU were visited by the Deputy General of Alava, Ramiro González, the Vice-Deputy General of Alava and Regional Deputy for Economic Development and Territorial Balance, Pilar García de Salazar, the Vice-Rector of the Alava Campus, Manoli Igartua, and the Director of Strategy, Market and Technology at TECNALIA, Agustín Sáenz, accompanied by the project’s operational managers, Doctor Jose Luis Pedraz, lead researcher of the Nanobiocel group in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of the Basque Country, and Doctor Eider Larrarte, Director of Pharma Labs at TECNALIA, who saw the bioprinter in operation.

The bioprinter will enable three-dimensional organ and tissue structures and pharmaceutical forms to be produced using additive manufacturing technologies. Thanks to the presence of extrusion, inkjet and hot-melt print heads, the bioprinter is capable of manufacturing complex 3D structures, made up of any arbitrary combination of biological materials and cells. Furthermore, with the incorporation of electrospinning and electrowriting techniques, it has moved into tissue regeneration and the manufacture of advanced health bio-devices. In the course of this year, new components based on microfluidic technologies will be acquired to extend the bioprinter's field of application to the resolution of new biomedical challenges.

3D printing paves the way for personalised medicine in special situations and for small groups of patients who cannot be treated with traditional, commercially available pharmaceutical forms. Such is the case of the paediatric population, where specific dosage is needed depending on weight and pathology, which can be solved by 3D printing. Another stakeholder is patients who have to chronically take different drugs and 3D printing can unify these doses into a single tablet. In the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, cartilage, bone, skin and tendons are being designed through various projects.

Throughout this year and 2024, researchers will focus on the experimental phase and evolution of the software and machine intelligence, with the aim of enabling hospitals and pharmacy units to have bioprinters for the manufacture of printed matter and biostructures.

In short, the project responds to TECNALIA's commitment to offer the pharmaceutical industry comprehensive support in the R&D of medicines and in the development of technologies for the 3D printing of drugs in personalised medicine. In the case of the UPV/EHU, the development of this project will enable it to incorporate new researchers into the Nanobiocel research group through the Ikerbasque initiative, as well as equipping itself with scientific infrastructures that will enable it to develop advanced biomedical projects.

Boosting the pharmaceutical industry in the Basque Country

The NanoBioCel research group at the University of the Basque Country, which also belongs to Ciber BBN and the Nanbiosis unique scientific-technical infrastructure, and TECNALIA have been working together for the last three decades, resulting in the BPL-Basque Pharma Labs 4.0 project, making Alava a benchmark in this field. Thanks to the Provincial Council’s support, in 2018 this project was able to open new facilities at Alava Technology Park, which are the most advanced in Spain, and the number of highly qualified people on the team went from 25 to 60.

Both the APD and GLP projects contribute to the generation of a top-level Pharmaceutical Node in the Territory, and are aligned with the deployment of the RIS3 Euskadi smart specialisation strategy and the social/health transition promoted by Europe.

About UPV/EHU

The University of the Basque Country is ranked among the Top 400 universities in the world, according to the Shanghai ranking. It has over 43,000 graduate and post-graduate students, and employs more than 7,400 people in higher education, research and transfer. It is the main research agent in the Basque Country.

About TECNALIA

TECNALIA is the largest applied research and technological development centre in Spain, a European benchmark and member of the Basque Research and Technology Alliance. TECNALIA works with companies and institutions to increase their competitiveness, improve quality of life of people and achieve sustainable growth. This is possible thanks to people who are passionate about technology and committed to building a better society. Its main areas of action are: Digital Transformation, Smart Manufacturing, Energy Transition, Sustainable Mobility, Urban Ecosystem, Personalised Health and Circular Economy.