BiologIC Technologies
The biotech company behind the 3D printed ‘lab-on-a-chip’ platforms, is accelerating the development and manufacture of cheaper drugs and vaccines, after an Innovate UK-backed project. BiologIC Technologies’ miniaturised devices integrate multiple laboratory functions onto a single piece.
BiologIC says that these devices enable faster, more efficient, and cost-effective analysis of biological samples, with applications ranging from drug testing to point-of-care diagnostics.
Through Analysis for Innovators (A4I), a grant funding programme run by Innovate UK, the company was able to access the expertise and advanced equipment of the National Measurement Laboratory (NML) hosted at LGC. As a result, the company says it has achieved a ‘massive leap’ in its understanding of how the plastic materials used in the 3D printing the chips interact with biological applications.
BiologIC says that it is now able to demonstrate greater biocompatibility and stability of its ‘lab-on-a-chip’ which means pharmaceutical manufacturers and contract, design and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs) can now speed up the work needed before developing minimum viable products, which will ultimately lead to faster time-to-market and cheaper drugs and vaccines.
Dr. Colin Barker, Chief Scientific Officer at BiologIC Technologies said: “Without access to the high-end analytics, and more critically, the world class expertise at NML made possible through the A4I funding, it would likely have taken us several years to achieve the same insights.
“We’ve already taken the learning we’ve gained from the grant and applied it in real time. We have several active projects, where we have directly applied our new knowledge to improve customer outcomes. This grant directly led to an increase in our understanding, which has had an immediate impact, and greater commercial success.”
According to BiologIC, 3D printed materials without any post processing, do not support reproducible biology. For the company to support its customers in developing and manufacturing high-quality biological products, it first had to understand the chemical interactions between the 3D printed materials and biological samples.
Dr. Barker added: “By the nature of them being 3D printable materials, they’re very reactive. And so, part of BiologIC’s proprietary know-how is how to take those materials and treat them to make them biocompatible. But that’s a very complex, very slow process.
“Our customers are trying to produce advanced neology products at scale with robust reproducibility. The greater understanding of our materials through the A4I grant allows us to standardise and streamline our production methodologies, delivering reproducible results at a lower cost.”
Simon Yarwood, Knowledge Transfer Manager – Industrial Technologies, A4I at Innovate UK KTN said: “The transformation of BiologIC is yet another success story generated by A4I. It is an effective demonstration of how we empower companies to boost their productivity and their competitiveness by solving difficult technical analysis-type problems that maybe they’ve been battling with for some time.”
In March 2020, BiologIC Technologies installed a Stratasys full-colour, multi-material J826 3D printing platform, as it seeked to produce a device that could scale down laboratory processes and enable scientists to design biology within a smaller footprint.
