Orgenesis Inc — a developer, manufacturer and provider of advanced cell therapies — has entered into a collaboration agreement with Digilab Inc to develop a live-cell printing process and systems designed to automate the production of 3-D live cellular structures and tissues.

Under the agreement, Orgenesis will have the exclusive rights to co-develop the process and systems required for its therapeutic collaboration programmes and to use, market and distribute the new cell printer systems and related products.

The systems will incorporate Digilab’s proprietary synQUAD liquid-dispensing technology; this offers both on-the-fly and drop-by-drop non-contact cell printing, while maintaining the viability of even the most delicate cells.

It provides full control of critical dispensing parameters such as height of dispense and dispensing speed, which allows the printing of both viscous solutions and fragile cells.

Vered Caplan, CEO of Orgenesis (www.orgenesis.com), said: “We are excited to partner with Digilab to co-develop and market this next-generation cell printer capability, which will be able to not only dispense cells but also —for the first time — assemble living cells in a three-dimensional matrix.

"Our goal is to use this technology, which has the potential to transform the cell therapeutics service industry, by automating the process to produce complex cell structures and full organs.

“In our preliminary trials with Digilab, we were able to print liver cells from our cell bank in the CellJet, proving the feasibility of this technology, which has the potential for a wide range of uses, including stem cell applications, customised cell arrays, cell-drug interaction studies, cell culturing, and tissue engineering.”