The ageing of the population is one of the great challenges of Europe in the 21st century. INKplant, a European Union's H2020 funded project, is born to face this problem. 19 partners from universities, research centers, SMEs, multinational corporations, and hospitals collaborate in this initiative that has just celebrated its first meeting. A multidisciplinary team that will work over the next three years on the fusion of different biomaterials and 3D printing technologies to bring a new solution to the design of biomimetic implants.

The goal of Inkplant’s kick-off was to get a project overview and that all the partners get to know each other. “It was very important to get an outline of the responsibilities as well as guidelines and rules for the communication among partners. All different work packages were introduced so that all the partners get familiar with the different fields addressed within the project and to get an overview of the whole big picture,” Elena Guillén, project lead, says. 

After this first contact, the consortium got a roadmap for the next six months, including the next steps. “It was clarified how the reporting and deliverables are organized within this H2020 project. The partners shared very interesting insights into their field, e,g. use cases like meniscus or bone reconstruction for dental implants but also social humanities and cross-cutting priorities.

Different manufacturing methods will be used in the project: Lithographic ceramic manufacturing, polyjet technology, multi-material inkjet printing. Also, different materials: nano-hydroxyapatite, hydrogel, biodegradable polymers, PDMS, support material. 

During the meeting, the whole consortium was split up into smaller working groups to discuss the requirements for the different topics: Materials and fabrication process, test structures and cell studies, modeling and design, use cases, and future clinical applications.

Due to the covid-19 situation, the meeting was entirely online. The face-to-face interaction and small talks in breaks were missing, but to still have a little fun-fact and to make it more interactive, they prepared a quiz about tissue engineering and 3D printing for the partners where the outcome is compiled in the img with the many graphs. “Nice to know: 100% of the people of our consortium have the same goal – to contribute with their work to society. This is reflected in the high motivation all partners showed during the work also after the kick-off meeting ”, Guillén concludes. You can access to the whole quiz answers here.