Normally, biological matter such as cells in organs in a body is organized in three dimensions, i.e. the different cell types have contacts to their neighbors in three dimensions. In contrast, however, the normal cell culture used in biological laboratories is cultivated in two dimensions, e.g. in Petri dishes or cell culture flasks, and can therefore only be regarded as a very rough model of reality.
In the meantime, this has led to the fact that 3D cell culture is favored in modern cell culture systems, which is also expressed in a significant increase in publications in this field in recent years(http://www.3dcellculture.com/).
In the FG Nanobiosystem Technology, work is being carried out on the development of microbioreactors and cell cultivation substrates for 3D cell cultivation on the basis of preliminary work in the junior research groups "Microfluidics and Biosensorics" and "Microplastic Moulds" (FKZ FKZ03ZIK062, FKZ03ZIK465 within the framework of funding for the Centres for Innovation Competence in the Enterprise Region programme).
It is generally accepted that vascularisation, i.e. the supply of an organ or tissue with blood vessels, is a key problem in "tissue engineering". Of course, a true replication of capillary structures in tissue would be desirable, which has not yet been achieved and is the subject of ambitious research. In addition to this basic work (also in the FG NBS), this function can be reproduced in cell culture in a very rough way by perfusing the culture with nutrient medium analogous to the blood circulation.
In the meantime, the FG has succeeded in defining standards that allow the routine use of 3D cell culture systems in the "LifeScience" laboratory, with a focus on the use of microfluidic solutions that allow perfusion, i.e. flow of nutrient solution through the cell culture or tissue.
The next step is the extension of these systems to so-called co-cultivation systems, which realize different cell types in a cultivation system preferably in a substrate in a model corresponding to nature, exactly as in the situation in the organism.
A real 3D cultivation of cells, e.g. of neurons, lets expect a completely new approach to the research of neuronal cell systems and thus the brain. The FG Nanobiosystem Technology[1] is therefore involved in the development of 3D sensor arrays for the investigation of neuronal systems in collaboration with the Universities of Tampere University of Technology (TUT), the University of Tampere (UTA) in the EU funded project (3D NeuroN, FP7 ICT FET OPEN (FKZ 296590).
1] In collaboration with the FG Biosignal Processing
