Riccardo Levato receives Vidi grant of 800,000 euros

Associate professor Riccardo Levato of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine has been awarded an 800,000 euro Vidi grant by NWO for his research on bioprinting.

Three-dimensional bioprinting holds the promise to revolutionize medicine, using cells and biomaterials to replicate human tissues. To date, once printed, engineered tissues need to mature to acquire functions of their native counterpart. In nature, tissue maturation is guided through precise events occurring over time, including changes in the chemistry and mechanics of the cellular milieu. Levato will develop a new generation of bioprinters that permit to guide tissue maturation over time, harnessing technologies derived from artificial intelligence and computer vision, stimuli-responsive biomaterials, and developmental biology, thus bringing bioprinting a step closer to fulfil its potential for regenerative medicine.

Levato: “Donor tissues and cells for transplantation are life-saving, but scarce and often not available for many patients. Printing living cells is a first step to build human tissues in the lab, but to date, printed cells do not fully mimic the function of our body parts. With this VIDI project, I will develop a new technology to accompany and guide cell maturation into tissues gradually over time after printing, to offer a new solution for biomedical and healthcare research. I am excited for the support of NWO, as the Vidi funding will help me investigate new technologies at the boundary between photonics, biology and chemistry, and their impact on medicine.”

Vidi

Vidis are awarded annually by NWO. Of the 551 applications, 304 (55%) were submitted by men, 244 (44%) by women and 3 gender neutral. A total of 97 Vidi grants were awarded; 54 to male candidates and 43 to female candidates. The grant allows laureates to develop an innovative line of research and expand their own research group over five years.