Mario Moisés Alvarez

• Ph.D.
• Research Director at Tecnológico de Monterrey

Mixed microbial communities are essential for various ecosystems, with bacteria often exhibiting unique behaviors in structured environments. However, replicating these interactions in vitro remains challenging, as traditional microbiology techniques based on well-mixed cultures fail to capture the spatial organization of natural communities. Chaot...

This scientometric analysis of 393 original papers published from January 2000 to June 2019 describes the development and use of bioinks for 3D bioprinting. The main trends for bioink applications and the primary considerations guiding the selection and design of current bioink components (i.e., cell types, hydrogels, and additives) were reviewed....

The modern era demands multifunctional materials to support advanced technologies and tackle complex environmental issues caused by these innovations. Consequently, material hybridization has garnered significant attention as a strategy to design materials with prescribed multifunctional properties. Drawing inspiration from nature, a multi‐scale ma...

The necessity of developing more realistic artificial food requires the aggregation of different biomaterials in an ordered and controlled manner. One of the most advanced methods for this is food printers reproducing additive manufacturing processes. This study presents a fully automatized 3D food printer leveraging collaborative Cartesian and mul...

Hands-on training in tissue engineering is often associated with specialized labs and expensive equipment, such as CO2 incubators. To minimize the use of costly commercial incubators and provide a more vivid engineering experience in a biology lab, we present a hands-on project that introduces medium to large groups of undergraduate or graduate stu...

Hydrogel droplets with inner compartments are valuable in various fields, including tissue engineering. A droplet‐based biofabrication method is presented for the chaos‐assisted production of architected spheres (CAPAS) for the rapid generation of multilayered hydrogel spheres (ranging from 0.6 to 3.5 mm in diameter) at high‐throughput rates (up to...

Bioprinting represents a promising technique for fabricating three-dimensional (3D) constructs with high-resolution and controlled architecture. However, many bioprinting technologies rely on expensive extrusion systems, which may compromise cell viability due to harsh processing conditions. This study presents the fabrication and characterization...

Tumor-on-chips (ToCs) are useful platforms for studying the physiology of tumors and evaluating the efficacy and toxicity of anti-cancer drugs. However, the design and fabrication of a ToC system is not a trivial venture. We introduce a user-friendly, flexible, 3D-printed microfluidic device that can be used to culture cancer cells or cancer-derive...

The development of machines explores the development of a manufacturing system. This perspective offers challenges adjacent to the materials, the product that wants to be manufactured, the technical considerations that must be covered during implementation and the manner of delivering the products to the user. This article addresses the design and...

Structures in nature are often multi‐material, and their structures have a fine balance between segregation and aggregation (mixed, but not scrambled) that provides functionality. Chaotic fabrication, a technology that exploits the ability of chaotic advection to create predictable and reproducible multilayered structures, excels at producing mater...

COVID-19 made explicit the need for rethinking the way in which we conduct testing for epidemic emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the dependence on centralized lab facilities and resource-intensive methodologies (e.g., RT-qPCR methods) greatly limited the deployment of widespread testing efforts in many developed and underdeveloped countri...

Biopolymer microgels present many opportunities in biomedicine and tissue engineering. To understand their in vivo behavior in therapeutic interventions, long-term monitoring is critical, which is usually achieved by incorporating fluorescent materials within the hydrogel matrix. Current research is limited due to issues concerning the biocompatibi...

Bioprinters show great promise as enablers of regenerative medicine and other biomedical engineering applications. In this work, we present a flexible and cost-effective design for a do-it-yourself bioprinter capable of printing/bioprinting gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) and Pluronic constructs at flow rates of 0.05-0.1 mL/min and effective resolutio...

Nature abounds with micro‐architected materials containing layered multi‐material patterns that often transition within the very same monolithic piece. Fabricating these complex materials using current technologies is challenging. Multimaterial chaotic printing is presented—an extrusive printing method based on the use of chaotic advection—that can...

Chronic wounds have become one of the most important issues for healthcare systems and are a leading cause of death worldwide. Wound dressings are necessary to facilitate wound treatment. Engineering wound dressings may substantially reduce healing time, reduce the risk of recurrent infections, and reduce the disability and costs associated. In the...

The field of biofabrication has seen tremendous advances in the past decade. More recently, the emerging role of biofabrication in allowing faithful generation of models of human tissues in their healthy and diseased states has been demonstrated and has rapidly expanded. These biomimetic models are potentially widely applicable in a range of resear...

Tumor-on-chips have become an effective resource in cancer research. However, their widespread use remains limited due to issues related to their practicality in fabrication and use. To address some of these limitations, we introduce a 3D-printed chip, which is large enough to host ~1 cm³ of tissue and fosters well-mixed conditions in the liquid ni...

We present a simple and cost-effective strategy for developing gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogels supplemented with minimally processed tissue (MPT) to fabricate densely packed skeletal-muscle-like tissues. MPT powder was prepared from skeletal muscle by freeze-drying, grinding, and sieving. Cell-culture experiments showed that the incorporatio...

Light-based bioprinter manufacturing technology is still prohibitively expensive for organizations that rely on accessing three-dimensional biological constructs for research and tissue engineering endeavors. Currently, most of the bioprinting systems are based on commercial-grade-based systems or modified DIY (do it yourself) extrusion apparatuses...

Vascularization Vascularization is an outstanding challenge for tissue engineers. In article 2200448 by Mario Moisés Alvarez, Grissel Trujillo-de Santiago, and co-workers, a one-step bioprinting strategy is introduced for the creation of pre-vascularized tissues. Chaotic flows, induced by a static mixer, compartmentalize permanent and sacrificial m...

Neuron-on-chip (NoC) systems-microfluidic devices in which neurons are cultured-have become a promising alternative to replace or minimize the use of animal models and have greatly facilitated in vitro research. Here, we review and discuss current developments in neuron-on-chip platforms, with a particular emphasis on existing biological models, cu...

Current tissue engineering techniques frequently rely on hydrogels to support cell growth, as these materials strongly mimic the extracellular matrix. However, hydrogels often need ad hoc customization to generate specific tissue constructs. One popular strategy for hydrogel functionalization is to add nanoparticles to them. Here, we present a plan...

The biofabrication of living constructs containing hollow channels is critical for manufacturing thick tissues. However, current technologies are limited in their effectiveness in the fabrication of channels with diameters smaller than hundreds of micrometers. It is demonstrated that the co‐extrusion of cell‐laden hydrogels and sacrificial material...

Increasing expansion rate in cell manufacturing systems would allow faster delivery of life-saving treatments to a greater number of patients. Chaotic printing is a novel biofabrication technology that could improve cell expansion capabilities by producing hydrogel filaments layered with open channels, resulting in significantly higher surface area...

The micropatterning of thin films represents a challenging task, even for additive manufacturing techniques. In this work, we introduce the use of inkjet-printing technology coupled with a gas-foaming process, to produce patterned porosities on polymeric thin films, to develop a bubble-writing method. Inkjet printing of an aqueous solution of poly...

The use of organoids has become increasingly popular recently due to their self-organizing abilities, which facilitate developmental and disease modeling. Various methods have been described to create embryoid bodies (EBs) generated from embryonic or pluripotent stem cells but with varying levels of differentiation success and producing organoids o...

The development of novel cancer therapeutic strategies has garnered increasing interest in cancer research. Among the therapeutic choices, chemosensitizers have shown exciting prospects. Peptides are an attractive alternative among the molecules that may be used as chemosensitizers. We rationally designed a new-to-nature peptide, nurP28, derived fr...

Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field that promises to reshape many spheres of our lives. One core activity in nanotechnology is the synthesis of nanoparticles. Here, we introduce a research-based activity centered on the use of zein, the main constitutive protein in maize, as a raw material for the synthesis of nanoparticles. In the context...

Cancer continues to be a leading cause of mortality in modern societies; therefore, improved and more reliable in vitro cancer models are needed to expedite fundamental research and anti-cancer drug development. Here, we describe the use of a miniaturized continuous stirred tank reactor (mCSTR) to first fabricate and mature cancer spheroids (i.e, d...

Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a time- and cost-effective way to monitor SARS-CoV-2 spread in communities and therefore represents a complement to clinical testing. WBE applicability has been demonstrated in a number of cases over short-term periods as a method for tracking the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and an early-warning tool for predicting...

3D bioprinting is an emerging technique employed for engineering complex structures that can be used for regenerative medicine. Extrusion of hydrogels through a nozzle has produced layer by layer designs towards engineering patterns. Despite the significant advances of these systems in the biomedical field, there are some inherent constraints to ac...

The use of organoids has become increasingly popular recently due to their self-organizing abilities, which facilitate developmental and disease modeling. Various methods have been described to create embryoid bodies (EBs) generated from embryonic or pluripotent stem cells but with varying levels of differentiation success and producing organoids o...

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) has been recently studied as an alternative method for cost-effective diagnostics in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Recent reports document that LAMP-based diagnostic methods have a comparable sensitivity and specificity to that of RT-qPCR. We report the use of a portable Arduino-based LA...

Three‐dimensional food printing (3DFP) uses additive manufacturing concepts to fabricate customized designed products with food ingredients in powder, liquid, dough, or paste presentations. In some cases, it uses additives, such as hydrocolloids, starch, enzymes, and antibrowning agents. Chocolate, cheese, sugar, and starch‐based materials are amon...

For-profit biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies have played an essential role in the research and development (R&D) of innovative medical products and drugs for many decades and embody a trillion-dollar industry. The past decades have been marked by an increase in growth of social non-profit biotechnology companies and organizations led by...

We have investigated the importance of the rate of vaccination to contain COVID-19 in urban areas. We used an extremely simple epidemiological model that is amenable to implementation in an Excel spreadsheet and includes the demographics of social distancing, efficacy of massive testing and quarantine, and coverage and rate of vaccination as the ma...

Controlling cellular organization is crucial in the biofabrication of tissue-engineered scaffolds, as it affects cell behavior as well as the functionality of mature tissue. Thus far, incorporation of physiochemical cues with cell-size resolution in three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds has proven to be a challenging strategy to direct the desired cellu...

Synthetic polymers (SyPs) have found many relevant applications niches in biomedical engineering. Their mechanical properties, defined chemical structure, batch to batch consistency are attractive features that render them superior (at least in some senses) to natural polymers. However, most SyPs must be functionalized in order to properly serve fo...

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) has been recently studied as an alternative method for cost-effective diagnostics in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Recent reports document that LAMP-based diagnostic methods have a comparable sensitivity and specificity to that of RT-qPCR. We report the use of a portable Arduino-based LA...

This study is the first focused on the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in different freshwater environments in an urban setting. Groundwater and surface water reservoirs for drinking water as well as water from receiving rivers of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area were sampled repeatedly during a SARS-CoV-2 peak phase between October 2020 and January 2021, an...

This is the first study focused on the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in different freshwater environments of an urban setting. Groundwater and surface water reservoirs for drinking water as well as water from receiving rivers of Monterrey Metropolitan Area were sampled repeatedly during a peak phase between October 2020 and January 2021, and the virus RNA...

Cancer research depends on the challenging task of producing representative and reliable models of human disease; these have largely been limited to mouse models or human cancer cell lines cultured in monolayers. Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture offers more realistic options, but conventional 3D models still fail to recreate the human tumor micr...

COVID-19, the first pandemic of this decade and the second in less than 15 years, has harshly taught us that viral diseases do not recognize boundaries; however, they truly do discriminate between aggressive and mediocre containment responses. We present a simple epidemiological model that is amenable to implementation in Excel spreadsheets and suf...

Massive worldwide serological testing for SARS-CoV-2 is needed to determine the extent of virus exposure in a particular region, the ratio of symptomatic to asymptomatic infected persons, and the duration and extent of immunity after infection. To achieve this, the development and production of reliable and cost-effective SARS-CoV-2 antigens is cri...

We have investigated the importance of the rate of vaccination to contain COVID-19 in urban areas. We used an extremely simple epidemiological model that is amenable to implementation in an Excel spreadsheet and includes the demographics of social distancing, efficacy of massive testing and quarantine, and coverage and rate of vaccination as the ma...

Multiple human tissues exhibit fibrous nature. Therefore, the fabrication of hydrogel filaments for tissue engineering is a trending topic. Current tissue models are made of materials that often require further enhancement for appropriate cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. Here we present a simple strategy, based on the use surface...

p>ChE is proposed for the creation of multi-material and multilayered nanostructures. This technology allows for the precise, continuous, and deterministic generation of internal nano-striations. The potential of ChE is shown through the fabrication of a nano-striated carbon electrode that shows a significant increase in capacitance. ChE has the po...

We demonstrate a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method to detect and amplify SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences using a set of in-house designed initiators that target regions encoding the N protein. We were able to detect and amplify SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acids in the range of 62 to 2 × 10⁵ DNA copies by this straightforward method. Using sy...

Pyrolysis is a feasible solution for environmental problems related to the inadequate disposal of waste tires, as it leads to the recovery of pyrolytic products such as carbon black, liquid fuels and gases. The characteristics of pyrolytic carbon black can be enhanced through chemical activation in order to produce the required properties for its a...

In article number 2000913, Marc Madou, Sergio O. Martinez‐Chapa and co‐workers fabricated carbon‐gold micro/nano hierarchical platforms using stimuli‐responsive wrinkling technology, utilizing the generation of depth wise photo‐crosslinking gradient in SU8 thin films doped with an ultraviolet light absorbing gold precursor. With micro/nano topologi...

Indwelling and implanted medical devices are subject to contamination by microbial pathogens during surgery, insertion or injection, and ongoing use, often resulting in severe nosocomial infections. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) offer a promising alternative to conventional antibiotics to reduce the incidence of such infections, as they exhibit bro...

Here it is reported on the fabrication of a carbon‐gold micro/nano hierarchical platform using a stimuli‐responsive wrinkling technology. The approach exploits the generation of depth wise photo‐crosslinking gradient in SU8 thin films doped with a UV light absorbing gold precursor. Wrinkled films are then pyrolyzed at 900 °C, resulting in well pres...

Massive worldwide serological testing for SARS-CoV-2 is needed to determine the extent of virus exposure in a particular region, the ratio of symptomatic to asymptomatic infected persons, and the duration and extent of immunity after infection. To achieve this aim, the development and production of reliable and cost-effective SARS-CoV-2 antigens is...

We report a method for expanding microchannel-embedded paper devices using a precisely controlled gas-foaming technique for the generation of volumetric tissue models in vitro. We successfully fabricated hollow, perfusable microchannel patterns contained in a densely entangled network of bacterial cellulose nanofibrils using matrix-assisted sacrifi...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has crudely demonstrated the need for massive and rapid diagnostics. By the first week of July, more than 10,000,000 positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, although this number could be greatly underestimated. In the case of an epidemic emergency, the first line of response should b...

The use of three-dimensional (3D) printing for biomedical applications has expanded exponentially in recent years. However, the current portfolio of 3D printable inks is still limited. For instance, only a few protein matrices have been explored as printing/bioprinting materials. Here, we introduce the use of zein, the primary constitutive protein...

Cells do not work alone but instead function as collaborative micro-societies. The spatial distribution of different bacterial strains (micro-biogeography) in a shared volumetric space, and their degree of intimacy, greatly influences their societal behavior. Current microbiological techniques are commonly focused on the culture of well-mixed bacte...

Multiple human tissues exhibit fibrous nature. Therefore, the fabrication of hydrogel filaments for tissue engineering is a trending topic. Current tissue models are made of materials that often require further enhancement for appropriate cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. Here we present a simple strategy, based on the use surface...

We present a simple epidemiological model that includes demographic density, social distancing, and efficacy of massive testing and quarantine as main parameters to model the progression of COVID-19 pandemics in densely populated urban areas (i.e., above 10,000 hab km2). Our model demonstrates that effective containment of pandemic progression in d...

This paper introduces the concept of continuous chaotic printing, i.e., the use of chaotic flows for deterministic and continuous extrusion of fibers with internal multilayered micro- or nanostructures. Two free-flowing materials are coextruded through a printhead containing a miniaturized Kenics static mixer (KSM) composed of multiple helicoidal e...

Gaurav Chauhan, Marc Madou, Sergio O. Martinez‐Chapa, and co‐workers present a controlled and scalable process to grow nano‐spaced gold nanoparticles on glassy carbon surface. Nanoparticle growth mechanisms inside a photocrosslinking and carbonizing SU8 matrix are detailed along with the technology to develop novel 3D carbon‐gold composites microst...

The detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may enable a broad range of cancer-related applications, including the identification of acquired drug resistance during treatments. However, the non-scalable fabrication, prolonged sample processing times, and the lack of automation, associated with most of the technologies developed to...

The Ebola virus (EBOV) disease has caused serious and recurrent epidemics in recent years, resulting in a fatality rate of nearly 50%. The most effective experimental therapy against the EBOV is the use of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). In this work, we describe the development of HEK293T cells engineered for the transient and stable expression of m...

This approach involves the synthesis of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) within the carbonizing photoresist (SU8) to achieve GNPs trapped glassy carbon (GNPs‐GC) substrates. Surface size distribution and interparticle separation of GNPs is primarily controlled by changing the metal precursor concentration. Chemical stability and fabrication control are ac...

By the first week of April 2020, more than 1,500,000 positive cases of COVID-19 and more than 50,000 deaths had been officially reported worldwide. While developed countries such as the USA, Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany struggle to mitigate the propagation of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Latin America, India, and Afric...

The COVID-19 pandemic has crudely demonstrated the value of massive and rapid diagnostics. By the first week of April, more than 900,000 positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported worldwide, although this number could be greatly underestimated. In the case of an epidemic emergency, the first line of response should be based on commercially avail...

COVID-19, the first pandemic of this decade and the second in less than 15 years, has harshly taught us that viral diseases do not recognize boundaries; however, they truly do discriminate between aggressive and mediocre containment responses. We present a simple epidemiological model that is amenable to implementation in Excel spreadsheets and suf...

The detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may enable a broad range of cancer-related applications, including the identification of acquired drug resistance during treatments. However, the non-scalable fabrication, prolonged sample processing times, and the lack of automation, associated with most of the technologies developed to...

This paper introduces the concept of continuous chaotic printing, i.e., the use of chaotic flows for deterministic and continuous fabrication of fibers with internal multilayered micro- or nanostructures. Two free-flowing materials are coextruded through a printhead containing a miniaturized Kenics static mixer (KSM) composed of multiple helicoidal...

Bioprinting, the printing of living cells using polymeric matrixes (mainly hydrogels), has attracted great attention among science and technology circles. North America has been one of the sources of bioprinting-related technology in recent years. As a natural consequence of geography, high-quality research in the area of bioprinting has started to...

Bioprinting, the printing of living cells using polymeric matrixes (mainly hydrogels), has attracted great attention among science and technology circles. North America has been one of the sources of bioprinting-related technology in recent years. As a natural consequence of geography, high-quality research in the area of bioprinting has started to...

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have the potential of becoming the gold standard marker for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring. However, current methods for its isolation and characterization suffer from equipment variability and human operator error that hinder its widespread use. Here we report the design and construction of a fully automa...

The ideal in vitro recreation of the micro-tumor niche—although much needed for a better understanding of cancer etiology and development of better anticancer therapies—is highly challenging. Tumors are complex three-dimensional (3D) tissues that establish a dynamic cross-talk with the surrounding tissues through complex chemical signaling. An exte...

The development of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic systems has received well-deserved attention in recent years in the scientific literature, and many experimental systems show great promise in real settings. However, in the case of an epidemic emergency (or a natural disaster), the first line of response should be based on commercially available an...

Closure of ocular wounds after an accident or surgery is typically performed by suturing, which is associated with numerous potential complications, including suture breakage, inflammation, secondary neovascularization, erosion to the surface and secondary infection, and astigmatism; for example, more than half of post-corneal transplant infections...