Established in 2020, Copner Biotech is a biotechnology company based in Ebbw Vale, Wales,
with its focus in 3D cell culture and associated technologies. What started as an initial
concept of next generation 3D printing technology, has gone from strength to strength,
creating an impressive portfolio of technologies,
products and services to the 3D cell culture markets.
Traditionally, mammalian cells are grown in a 2-dimensional environment,
such as petri dishes, but this is not without its setbacks, namely the
forced polarity that cells undergo due to the nature of the culture environment.
Cells grown 3-dimensionally exhibit more physiologically relevant characteristics.
Copner Biotech's state of the art design and manufacturing process enables 3D cell
culture scaffolds to be produced based on concentric shape constructs, such as circles,
providing a consistent variability of pore size (heterogenous pore size and distribution)
emanating from the centre to the periphery of scaffold.
The effect is to provide clear regions of the scaffold where cells will have more favourable
nutrient and oxygen exchange (periphery)and areas not so (centre). Such constructs better
represents physiological conditions in the body providing tangible experimental advantages
for research in fields studying cell microenvironments.
In the long term, Copner Biotech will ultimately aim to establish a foothold in the bioprinting
market. We will do this via innovative, industrial collaborations with like-minded companies
already in this space, utilising our novel technology. We continue to work upon and develop our
existing technologies, in the software and 3D printing hardware space, to create competitive products.
Our novel and proprietary GRAPE UK® 3D modelling format enables users to model and print highly
precise 3D constructs, with high batch-to-batch consistency.
With our next generation 3D
modelling software, users can design and create complex, microarchitectures directly
applicable to 3D cell culture and tissue engineering applications; for example the
cultivation and subsequent convenient extraction of spheroids.
Spheroids are a type of three-dimensional cell modeling that better simulate a live cell's
environmental; specifically regarding the reactions between cells and between cells
and the matrix.
The efficacy of an original scaffold design has been the subject of a collaboration project with
Swansea University realising fantastic cell culture results. These scaffolds are now available
through life sciences vendors Appleton Woods (UK) and Lucerna-Chem AG (Swiss).
Copner Biotech are working with researchers at Cardiff University School of Biosciences
to validate our 3D PETG scaffolds when applied to novel forms of microscopy research.
This collaboration will further establish our 3D PETG scaffold capabilities to be at the
forefront of 3D cell culture technology.
Bioprinting is the 3D printing of biological materials, which may or may not be laden with
mammalian cells. The predominant use of bioprinting is the production of tissue like structures
for drug testing, with more and more large companies looking towards this technology as an
alternative to animal testing.
Copner Biotech’s novel approach to bioprinting couples microfluidic droplet deposition with raster-style,
sequential printer head movement.
This method of deposition is firstly optimised to the user’s
own BioINK via our, ‘droplet optimisation protocol’ before users can print personalised 3D constructs.
Microfluidic droplet deposition performed in this manner unlocks a new level of precision and
control during the bioprinting process.
Early Adopter's Program : Copner Biotech is currently accepting prototype pre-orders for it's disruptive
3D bio extrusion printer system GRAPE S1. GRAPE S1 includes high precision 3D extrusion bio printer
powered by GRAPE UK® control software; bundled with GRAPE UK® 3D modelling software
Copner Biotech completes collaboration with Jellagen part funded with a SMART Cymru Innovation
Award of £123,724.
Jellagen world leaders in Marine Biotechnologies having developed an innovative BioINK based on
Jellyfish Collagen Type 0 that was successfully printed with the Next Generation 3D Bio Printer GRAPE S1 developed
by Copner Biotech
Copner Biotech announces collaboration with Jellagen part funded by a Innovate UK Award of £431,142.
Jellagen world leaders in Marine Biotechnologies developing an innovative BioINK based on Jellyfish Collagen Type 0
to be printed with the Next Generation 3D Inkjet Bio Printer developed by Copner Biotech.
3D Inkjet Bio Printer will be developed following the blueprint disclosed in our patent
'Additive Manufacturing using Low Viscosity Materials' UK Intellectual Property Office application
GB2206780.5 together with International application PCT/GB2022/000051.
Inline with Copner Biotech's family of 3D Bio Printers; this Inkjet printer will employ the GRAPE UK®
data format and printing control algorithms.
October 2022 Copner Biotech and Jellagen begin collaborative work on this exciting 19 month Innovate UK part funded project;
with both companies committed to establishing a bio printing centre of excellence in Wales.
Copner Biotech attends the MediWales 2022 Innovation Awards ceremony in Cardiff and were proud to walk away with the prestigious Innovation Start-Up Award. On receiving this award we looked back on our achievements over the last year both in terms of high growth and ground breaking innovation; culminating in this recognition from MediWales.
Copner Biotech's CEO and Accelerate Healthcare Technology Centre scientists complete their
collaborative research on the efficacy of our 3D PETG cell culture scaffold technology.
Accelerate Healthcare Technology Centre .... "this novel 3D cell culture platform offers enormous potential for
research into multiple cell types, including: cancer cells, cardiomyocytes,
fibroblasts and liver cells. Experts believe that the applications for this
product are genuinely limitless, and the reality is that researchers are routinely
discovering new opportunities provided by these advanced scaffold designs"
Design and manufacture of 3D cell culture scaffolds based on concentric shape constructs
Design and manufacture of 3D Extrusion and Negative Space Inkjet Bio Printers
Inventors of Graphical Rectangular Actual Positional Encoding (GRAPE UK®) 3D Modelling Data Format
High Precision Data Modelling
Cell Culture Research
Graphical Rectangular Actual Positional Encoding
Innovate UK Part Funded Project
SMART Cymru Part Funded Development
3D PETG Scaffolds available for Beta Testing with new collaborators.
PETG Scaffolds can be fabricated to your exact requirements.
For your exacting requirements in Cell Culture 3D PETG Scaffolds.
The latest innovation in the field of 3D Bio Printing .