Associate Professor David Collins, Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory (CBML)
Collins leads the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory (CBML) in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. David’s group explores the interplay between microscale forces and biological systems for 3D bioprinting, active micro-assembly, cellular stimulation, microfluidics and high-throughput cellular manipulation. David is also the Chief Scientific Officer of Cymphony Bio (www.cymphonybio.com), a company commercializing CBML’s dynamic interface printing (DIP) 3D printing technology, an approach uniquely suited for rapid 3D bioprinting of tissue models for drug discovery applications. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne David was a joint Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), and completed his PhD at Monash University in 2015 for which he was awarded the Bill Melbourne Award for best Engineering PhD thesis.
Abstract
What if we could manufacture living tissues with the speed, precision and scalability of modern additive manufacturing? The technologies developed in the Collins Lab sit at the intersection of 3D printing, acoustics and micromanipulation, developing new technologies to precisely organize cells and biomaterials at unprecedented speed and scale. Central to this is our Dynamic Interface Printing technology, published in Nature, which represents the fastest bioprinting approach reported to date and is the first approach that truly enables high-throughput tissue manufacture. Its combination of speed, scale and biological control offers a unique avenue towards the eventual printing of whole human organs, where our ongoing interdisciplinary work utilizing novel physical principles in biofabrication opens new possibilities in drug discovery, personalised medicine and the development of novel therapeutics.
