Alternatives and Simulation in Education: Xeno-Free 3D Bioprinting

New Webinar Series Launch
Alternatives and Simulation in Education
Organised by: CAAT • InterNICHE • Ombion
11 November 2025

Following the International Conference on Alternatives and Simulation in Education (Rio de Janeiro, August 2025) — a satellite event of the 13th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences — this new webinar series explores how humane, innovative learning tools and simulation technologies are transforming education and training across the life sciences.

About the Series
The monthly webinars will feature expert talks and panel discussions highlighting real-world implementation, ethical innovation, and new teaching methodologies.

The series will showcase international initiatives that:

Address education through the use of humane, innovative learning tools and alternatives to animal experiments, particularly in higher education for biology, medical, and veterinary students.
Support progress in science through training in cutting-edge non-animal methods (NAMs), helping shape ethical career pathways in humane science.

First Webinar in the Series
Topic: Xeno-Free 3D Bioprinting: Insights from a Hands-On Training Course
Speaker: Dr. Melissa Pires-Alves, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Biomedical science education continues to rely heavily on animal-based experimentation, despite the growing availability of ethical and innovative alternatives. Technologies such as organoids, organ-on-chip systems, and 3D bioprinting have been reshaping biomedical research — yet many of these approaches have still depended on animal-derived components such as fetal bovine serum (FBS), Matrigel, or porcine trypsin.

To overcome these limitations, Dr. Pires-Alves and colleagues at TU Berlin have developed a Master’s-level course that integrated lectures on cell culture, ethics, and bioprinting with hands-on laboratory work focused on xeno-free methodologies. Students cultivate cell lines in animal-free media, used recombinant enzymes for passaging, prepare xeno-free bioinks, and bioprint 3D liver constructs that are subsequently assessed through viability and metabolic assays.

During the presentation, Dr. Pires-Alves shared educational insights, student outcomes, and experimental results — demonstrating how the integration of ethics, technology, and practice can foster a new generation of researchers equipped to advance animal-free innovation in biomedical science.

See: Nessar, A., Röhrs, V., Ziersch, M., Ali, A. S., Moradi, J., Kurreck, A., ... & Kurreck, J. (2025). Promoting ethical and reproducible cell culture: implementing animal-free alternatives to teaching in molecular and cell biology. Frontiers in Toxicology, 7, 1670513. https://doi.org/10.3389/ftox.2025.167...

Ali, A. S., Berg, J., Roehrs, V., Wu, D., Hackethal, J., Braeuning, A., ... & Kurreck, J. (2024). Xeno-free 3D bioprinted liver model for hepatotoxicity assessment. International journal of molecular sciences, 25(3), 1811. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25031811

About the Speaker:
Dr. Melissa Pires-Alves earned her Ph.D. from the Center for Biotechnology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. She completed her postdoctoral research and subsequent work as a research scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, before joining Prof. Dr. Kurreck’s group at the Technical University of Berlin in 2023. Her research focuses on bioprinting, siRNA technologies, and virology, with a strong commitment to developing alternative models that reduce and replace animal use in science.