#3DStartup: Readily3D and its Volumetric Printing Technology Based on Tomography

Readily3D is a young Swiss startup that has developed a volumetric 3D printing method to create complex organic shapes in just a few seconds. The company used tomography to design its first 3D printer, which is capable of solidifying an entire object at once instead of taking the layer-by-layer approach typically used in additive manufacturing. This method could make it possible to manufacture human tissue, organs or even medical models for our surgeons, all very quickly and reliably. Recently, Readily3D presented its preliminary work on the pancreas: as part of the European project ENLIGHT, the startup 3D printed organic tissues of the organ. This is a very interesting development in the fight against diabetes. We met Damien Loterie, co-founder of Readily3D, to learn more about volumetric bioprinting and the company’s future projects.

3DN: Can you introduce yourself and Readily3D?

With my colleagues Paul Delrot and Christophe Moser, I co-founded Readily3D SA, a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Our company commercializes a so-called “volumetric” 3D printing technology based on tomography. The development of this technology dates back to 2017 and is a continuation of the research that Paul and I had been doing up to that point while doing our PhDs in Christophe’s lab.

From left to right: Paul Delrot, Christophe Moser, Damien Loterie, the founders of Readily3D

3DN: How was the ENLIGHT project born?

This project is the result of a long-standing collaboration between our team and that of Prof. Riccardo Levato at UMC Utrecht in the Netherlands. After successful trials on other cell types, Prof. Levato had the idea to apply our tomographic printing technology to pancreatic cells. The goal was to obtain more representative models of the pancreas than conventional cell cultures, relying on the speed of our printers and their ability to create vascular networks within the printed objects. The pancreas plays an important role in diabetes. Being able to obtain realistic simulations of this organ by bioprinting will greatly facilitate the search for new therapies.