Organization/Department
Co-founder and CEO of Antleron  

Biography 
Dr.ir. Jan Schrooten is co-founder and CEO of Antleron, a young R&D company on a mission to enable personalized manufacturing 4.0 in the domain of advanced therapies. The core concept of Antleron’s innovation is integrating 3D printing, engineered cell-production processes in bioreactors and digital process control & optimization into factories-of-the-future for cell therapy, vaccine and tissue manufacturing. 

Jan Schrooten is board member of flanders.bio, the cluster organisation for the life sciences sector in Flanders. 

Previously Jan Schrooten was senior research manager at KU Leuven (Belgium), responsible for the long-term management and technology transfer of biomaterials and tissue engineering research. Trained as a materials engineer, with an engineering PhD in biomaterials and a postgraduate in business administration, he has 25+ years of research experience in biomaterials and tissue engineering. He also co-founded and managed for 8 years Prometheus, the KU Leuven R&D division of Skeletal Tissue Engineering. 

Scientifically he focused on translational regenerative medicine, with special attention for tissue engineering applications. His work has been disseminated in 180+ peer reviewed international journal publications and conference proceedings (h-index of 45). He was (co)promotor of 15+ PhD researchers, editorial board member of international journals and visiting research fellow at the University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). 

Title of Talk 
3D-printing-by-Design: a solution for next generation life science applications 

Abstract 
The life science industry is eagerly looking for novel methods and processes to realize the transition from lab-scale proof-of-concept to commercial manufacturing. In particular, next generation health solutions require affordable, scalable and personalised manufacturing. At the same time, industrial-scale life sciences and biopharma stakeholders express a growing 3D printing interest as an enabling technology for build closed systems for advanced therapy manufacturing or diagnostic applications. 

With a focus on personalized and digital manufacturing, the combination of cells with biomaterials, 3D printing, risk-based (Quality-by-Design) bioprocess development and digital / soft sensor process control enable the co-creation of ‘factory-of-the-future’ solutions. Hence customized, closed system solutions for life science processes and products are becoming a reality, ranging from ‘on-chip’ point-of-care diagnostics to vaccine and advanced therapy manufacturing.