
Primary and stem cells are becoming important sources for the generation of organotypic tissue models used in many biopharmaceutical applications, regenerative medicine, disease modelling and drug discovery. They promise to revolutionize the drug discovery process at all stages, from target identification through to toxicology studies.
Preceding Annual Meeting Symposium TEDD organizes Sino-Swiss Workshop on Tissue Engineering with visiting scientists from China, USA and Hong Kong.
We invited the researchers from Southeast University (SEU) in China, Swiss academic and industrial research groups active in the field of tissue engineering, to build a strategic alliance. Such an agreement would have many benefits, e.g. exchange of students/researchers between the two institutions, organization of joint scientific events, options for international research projects with complementary expertise of partners.
A secure supply of food around the globe is not to be taken for granted. On the one hand the world population is growing fast, about 230’000 people per day, on the other hand climate change as well as rapidly spreading diseases block the production of food dramatically. Crop losses in the largest growing areas amount globally to 30%. Cellular agriculture focusing on the sustainable production of agriculture products from cell cultures in a laboratory instead of using livestock may provide a solution.
When experts from all over the world met this year at ZHAW Waedenswil to discuss the possibilities of single-use technologies, the future had already arrived. Most of the developments have been implemented in upstream processing (USP), and complete single-use process platforms up to cubic metre scale are already a reality. This issue looks back on the 2019 BioTech conference, while the next will look at cellular agriculture, a technology that is ushering in a revolution in food production.
“The road to success consists in teaming up with the right partners”.
For years, researchers led by Professor Fabian Fischer at HES-SO Valais have been concentrating on microbial fuel cells, also called bio-electrochemical systems, which use electrogenic bacteria to generate electricity. Their latest innovation is a device consisting of about 14 metres of joined-up microbial fuel cells, housed in the ‘catacombs’ – a series of underground tunnels – beneath the wastewater treatment plant in Sion. It uses bio-electrogenic rather than aerobic microbes for the primary purpose of producing energy and purified water, but also to save electricity.
After a successful first launch of the Swiss Symposium in Point-of-Care Diagnostics at the HES-SO Valais-Wallis in 2017 (CHIMIA 2018, 72, 80), the organization of the 2nd edition of this Symposium was spearheaded by the CSEM team in Landquart. Again close to 200 participants from science, industry and laboratory medicine attended this event during a beautiful and warm autumn day at the awesome Auditorium of the Graubündner Kantonalbank (GKB) in Chur.
The chemical industry is under increasing pressure to manufacture chemicals that match not only economic targets but also fulfill societal and environmental objectives. These requirements necessitate the adoption of new approaches and consequently the pace of application of biocatalysis in the chemical industry is increasing. The 10th Wädenswil Day of Life Sciences on June 7th, 2018 focused for the second time on ‘Industrial Biocatalysis’.
Le secteur de la santé et des sciences de la vie croît inexorablement. C’est aujourd’hui une industrie qui pèse plusieurs milliards de dollars. En 2016, les entreprises actives dans ce domaine ont affiché des ventes à hauteur de 140 milliards de dollars et leurs bénéfices ont plus que doublé par rapport à 2010. Les secteurs pharmaceutique, chimique, ainsi que ceux des technologies médicales et du dépistage, sont devenus la principale industrie d’exportation de la Suisse.
In June 2018, experts met at ETH Zurich to discuss technological challenges in advanced cell systems, variant interpretation, novel therapeutics and the integration of clinical data. The translation of these technologies into innovative clinical approaches in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, neurology and cardiology will be a challenge for the future. Detailed information at http://www.personalizedhealth.nexus. ethz.ch/
The healthcare and life science sector is growing inexorably and is now a multi-billion dollar industry. In 2016 the companies in this sector posted sales of USD 140 billion, and their profitability more than doubled by comparison with 2010. The pharmaceutical, diagnostics, medtech and chemical sectors have become Switzerland’s most powerful export industry and significant number of approved medications and diagnostics contain biotech elements.
A happy coincidence brought Dr Markus Rimann from ZHAW Waedenswil together with Dr Andreas Meyer from the start-up FGen and PD Dr Emanuela Felley-Bosco, Molecular Oncologist at Zurich University Hospital, to develop a technology platform for the manufacture and high throughput analysis of single mesothelioma spheroids. Armin Picenoni, former student in Chemistry for the Life Sciences at ZHAW, confirmed everything in writing his Master Thesis on this Innosuisse project.
Report II of the SWISS SYMPOSIUM in Point-of-Care Diagnostics 2017
Bioprinting is the technology of choice for realizing functional tissues such as vascular system, muscle, cartilage and bone. In the future, bioprinting will influence the way we engineer tissues and bring it to a new level of hysiological relevance. That was the topic of the 2017 TEDD Annual Meeting at ZHAW Waedenswil on 8th and 9th November. In an exciting workshop, the two companies regenHU Ltd. and CELLINK gave us an insight into highly topical applications and collaborations in this domain.