Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 5, 2026
10:51
3D Cell-Printed Hypoxic Cancer-on-a-Chip for Recapitulating Pathologic Progression of Solid Cancer
Published on: January 5, 2021
Tomographic Printing in a Chip: A Versatile Platform for Biomimetic 3D Organ-on-Chip
Riccardo Rizzo1, Viola Sgarminato2, Felix Wechsler1
1Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Advanced Healthcare Materials
|August 3, 2026
Summary
We developed a novel 3D organ-on-chip fabrication method using tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (TVAM) directly within microfluidic chips. This TVAM-in-a-chip approach enables rapid, contactless 3D organoid model creation, overcoming limitations of current technologies.
Area of Science:
- Biotechnology
- Bioengineering
- Materials Science
Background:
- Organ-on-chip (OoC) platforms are crucial for predictive in vitro testing.
- Existing methods face limitations due to 2.5D architectures, rigid materials, and complex assembly.
- Bioprinting often involves failure-prone post-fabrication steps, impacting reproducibility.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce a versatile approach for fabricating freeform 3D organ-on-chip models.
- To enable rapid, contactless fabrication of complex 3D microfluidic architectures.
- To overcome limitations of current 3D organ-on-chip technologies.
Main Methods:
- Integration of tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (TVAM) directly within preassembled microfluidic chips.
- Utilizing an open-source optical simulation framework (Dr.TVAM) for contactless fabrication.
- Employing biocompatible photoresins for diverse 3D channel designs, including cell-laden formulations.
Main Results:
- Successful generation of diverse freeform 3D channel architectures within microfluidic chips.
- Elimination of post-printing manual assembly, reducing leakage and contamination.
- Demonstration of multi-channel designs, confocal imaging compatibility, and dynamic culture of epithelial and endothelial models.
Conclusions:
- TVAM-in-a-chip offers a scalable and reproducible method for advanced 3D organ-on-chip development.
- This approach overcomes key limitations in current organ-on-chip fabrication.
- Paves the way for next-generation biomimetic in vitro models for drug discovery and toxicology.
