Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the most frequent causes of death. But only 3% of the patients survive out-of-hospital resuscitation, and only 18% survive in-hospital resuscitation. Today the time-frame for successful resuscitation is only about 3 to 5 minutes after cardiac arrest. Thereafter, with every minute a rapid decline in survival is observed, tending to “zero” beyond ten minutes of CPR. For decades no significant improvement of the clinical outcome and no significant scientific progress in resuscitation could be shown! More than 10 years ago a research group led by the international renowned cardiac surgeon Prof F Beyersdorf at the Freiburg University Hospital started intensive clinical R&D to develop a completely new therapeutic concept for resuscitation The new therapeutic concept enables a game changing breakthrough in resuscitation therapy. It is patient-individual and introduces for the first time a controlled, automated and personalized medical therapy in emergency medicine. The designation for the therapy is “CARL – Controlled Automated Reperfusion of the whoLe body”. To bring this new therapy worldwide into the hospitals and rescue organisations a new start-up company – the ResuSciTec GmbH - has been founded as a Spin-off from the Freiburg University Hospital in 2010. In close collaboration with the Freiburg University Hospital ResuSciTec developed an innovative system of medical devices called “CIRD - Controlled Integrated Resuscitation Device”. First very promising results from a clinical study in humans are already available. That means ResuSciTec has reached TRL 7. To reach TRL 9 and to start full international commercialisation and wide market take-up a consortium consisting of ResuSciTec as industrial partner and three university hospital in Freiburg (DE), Linz (AT) and Rotterdam (NL) will execute the proposed innovation action.

Improving the life quality of Europe’s increasingly elderly population is one of the most pressing challenges our society faces today. The need to treat age-related degenerative changes in e.g. articular joints or dental implants will boost the market opportunities for tissue regeneration products like biological scaffolds. State of the art 3D printing technologies can provide biocompatible implants with the right macroscopic shape to fit a patient-specific tissue defect. However, for a real functionality, there is a need for new biomaterials, technologies and processes that additionally allow the fabrication of a scaffold microstructure that induces tissue-specific regeneration. It is not possible to address the complexity in structure and properties of human tissues with a single material or fabrication technique. Besides, there are many types of tissue in the human body, each with their own internal structures and functions. INKplant vision is the fusion/combination of different biomaterials (6 different inks), high-resolution, high throughput additive manufacturing technologies already proved for industrial processes (ceramic sterolithography and 3D multimaterial inkjet printing), and advanced simulation and biological evaluation, to bring a new concept for the design and fabrication of biomimetic scaffolds (3D printed patient specific resorbable cell-free implants) which can address the complexity of the different tissue in the human body, demonstrated for 2 Use Cases. For a successful future translation, INKplant will consider all the relevant clinical adoption criteria already at the beginning of the development process. To address INKplant challenging objective the consortium includes the best expertise from the main areas of relevance to the project: biomaterials, 3D printing technology, tissue engineering, regulatory bodies and social humanities.

New miniaturized and smart medical implants are more and more used in all medical fields, including miniaturized pacemakers. These implants with a casing consisting often of a Ti-alloy may have to be removed after some months or several years and shall therefore not be completely overgrown by the cells. In the framework of the ongoing FET Open project LiNaBioFluid, we successfully demonstrated that self-organized sharp cones or spikes at Ti-alloy substrates created by pulsed laser-ablation can result not only in complete wetting by water and body fluids but at the same time provide too little surface for the cells (i.e., fibroblasts) to grow on. Compared to flat surfaces, the cell density on the microstructures is significantly lowered, the coverage is incomplete and the cells have a clearly different morphology. The best results regarding suppression of cell growth are obtained on structures created by femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser irradiation, which are subsequently electrochemically treated. The goal of the Coordination and Support Action CellFreeImplant is to find strategic partners (end-users) for future development of smart medical implants addressing wide-spread patients needs for instance in the field of cardio-vascular diseases. The project activities include the identification of the market segments and needs and assessment of the technology with end-users.