Multidisciplinary European training network for development of personalized antiinfective medical devices combining printing teechnologies and antimicrobial functionality (PRINT-AID)

According to ECDC,over 4 million healthcare-associated infections in the EU cause 37.000 deaths and cost EUR 7 billion/year. Half of them are related to medical devices (i.e., catheters, implants) and 80% of these are related to bacterial biofilms. A recent EC report highlighted the medical device sector's role iin dirving EU economic growth, employing 500K people in 25K companies (80% are SMEs) with annual sales of EUR 85 billion. The strategy to prevent medical device-infections is alteration of the device's surface with antimicrobials. However, current antimicrobialsurfaces don't control bacterial growth in tissue surrounding implants, and only sterilex® regulatory approval in the US as anti-biofilm agent. Participants in this proposal have earlier demonstrated a dramatic in vitro inhibition of biofilm formation by 3D-printing surfaces with antibiotics incorporated into the carrier polymers.this discovery opens new possibilities for printed medical devies that better resist biofilms.Our objective is to setup a new European education platform to guide and inspire young researchers in the intersectoral exploration of innovative routes to counteract microbial biofilms by fabricating anti-infective, tailored. 3D-printed medical devices. Current opportunities for young researchers to receive an structured, inter-sectoral and up-to-date education on personalized medicine and medical devices are marginal, and to our knowledge PRINT-AID is the first ETN set up for this purpose. State-of-the-art printing technologies will be combined with in vitro and in vivo biofilm models and novel tools for data integration/standardization. doctoral training will be performed within a high-quality netork of 12 participants.(5 industrial) from the EU and US. It will include online and face-to-face courses taught by researchers with academic and industrial expertise in biofilms, 3D-printing research, antimicrobials, material science, and drug development.