Sebastian Eggert

cellasys GmbH · R&D

Cell culture media (CCM) is a critical factor which profoundly influences cells, the observed biology and, most importantly, the research results. However, current metabolic and morphological assays still rely on manual, time-consuming, and destructive methods, which ultimately slow down the development of promising CCM formulations. In addition, e...

Microphysiometry is the measurement of the functions and activities of life or of living matter and of the physical and chemical phenomena involved. It allows label-free monitoring of cellular metabolism and morphology of living cells and enables new applications in fields such as pharmacology or toxicology. Recently, we were able to extend the met...

The evaluation of new cell culture media is usually conducted via weaning experiments, which require several weeks to acquire results for new media formulations. To accelerate the identification process and, hence, the successful development of new media formulations, we describe the cellasys #8 assay, which is a standardized microphysiometry metho...

Melt electrowriting (MEW) is an additive manufacturing (AM) technology with the ability to fabricate complex designs with high-resolution. The utility of MEW is studied in many fields including tissue engineering and soft robotics. However, current MEW hardware offers only basic functionality and is often designed and built in-house. This affects r...

Microphysiometry is a powerful technique to study metabolic parameters and detect changes to external stimuli. However, applying this technique for automated label-free and real-time measurements within cell-laden three-dimensional (3D) cell culture constructs remains a challenge. Herein, we present an entirely automated microphysiometry setup that...

Current mixing steps of viscous materials rely on repetitive and time-consuming tasks which are performed mainly manually in a low throughput mode. These issues represent drawbacks in workflows that can ultimately result in irreproducibility of research findings. Manual-based workflows are further limiting the advancement and widespread adoption of...

Gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA)-based hydrogels have become highly studied as modular tissue culture platforms due to the combination of the bioactivity of gelatin and tailorability of photo-crosslinkable hydrogels. However, current production and characterization workflows still rely on manual, time-consuming, and low-throughput processes, ultimately...

Automation liberates scientific staff from repetitive tasks, decreases the probability of human error and consequently enhances the reproducibility of lab experiments. However, the use of laboratory automation in academic laboratories is limited due to high acquisition costs and the inability to customize off-the-shelf hardware. To address these ch...

Achieving reproducibility in the 3D printing of biomaterials requires a robust polymer synthesis method to reduce batch-to-batch variation as well as methods to assure a thorough characterization throughout the manufacturing process. Particularly biomaterial inks containing large solid fractions such as ceramic particles, often required for bone ti...

While much progress has been accomplished in the development of physiologically relevant in vitro disease models, current manufacturing and characterisation workflows still rely on manual, time-consuming, and low-throughput processes, which are not efficient and prone to human errors. For these reasons adoption and, more importantly, reproducibilit...

There is a strong tendency in in vitro testing of drugs or toxins to use 3D tissue models as biological test objects rather than 2D cell monolayers. The latter have been used with increasing success throughout the last decades even though their limitations were well-known. Two-dimensional cell layers cannot fully mimic the complex architecture of r...

Melt electrowriting (MEW) combines the fundamental principles of electrospinning, a fibre forming technology, and 3D printing. The process, however, is highly complex and the quality of the fabricated structures strongly depends on the interplay of key printing parameter settings including processing temperature, applied voltage, collection speed,...

Three-dimensionally (3D) printed scaffolds and cell culture lattices with microscale features are increasingly being used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. One additive manufacturing technology used to design and fabricate such structures is melt electrowriting (MEW), a process which needs to be scaled in production to effectively tr...

Skin is a critical organ that plays a crucial role in defending the internal organs of the body. For this reason, extensive work has gone into creating artificial models of the epidermis for in vitro skin toxicity tests. These tissue models, called reconstructed human epidermis (RhE), are used by researchers in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and env...

Sensor-based cellular microphysiometry is a technique that allows non-invasive, label-free, real-time monitoring of living cells that can greatly improve the predictability of toxicology testing by removing the influence of biochemical labels. In this work, the Intelligent Mobile Lab for In Vitro Diagnostics (IMOLA-IVD) was utilized to perform cell...

The analysis of tissue network characteristics and cell distribution using histological methods is widely used. However, image analysis still relies on manual evaluation methods, known as semi-quantitative analysis, which are time-consuming and to a certain degree user-specific. For this reason, automated imaging processing methods have an enormous...

The cytosensor microphysiometer test method was validated by the European Commission for Validation of Alternative Methods to identify severe and not classified eye irritating chemicals. The corresponding INVITTOX # 130 protocol was adapted to the IMOLA-IVD technology. This method avoids the use of fetal bovine serum and is fully automated. Recent...

Advances in the areas of tissue engineering and microfabrication techniques have enabled promising in vitro platforms, known as Organs-on-Chips, with the aim of mimicking complex in vivo conditions for more accurate toxicology studies. To analyze the physiological change induced by chemicals or toxic substances continuously, sensors can be used in...

Presentation at EUROTOX2016

Screening a newly developed drug, food additive or cosmetic ingredient for toxicity is a critical preliminary step before it can move forward in the development pipeline. Due to the sometimes dire consequences when a harmful agent is overlooked, toxicologists work under strict guidelines to effectively catalogue and classify new chemical agents. Co...

Poster presentation at EUSAAT 2015