Welcome to the official website for the European research project SICTEC.

This project is focused on the development of technologies for separation and manipulation of single biological cells for life science research and medical applications. The research plan is built upon the results of the FP7 project PASCA (carried out from 01.09.2010 to 31.12.2013 under GA 257073). The single cell manipulation technology (SCM technology) developed within the PASCA project is based on inkjet-like printing of single biological cells confined in free flying micro droplets. It constitutes a universal platform for single cell analysis with proven potential for many life science applications. The objective of this project is to support the participating SMEs and companies to take up the SCM technology, to realize their own applications and to develop them into innovative products for the medical, biomedical and pharmaceutical markets. Central element of the research is the SCM prototype instrument as presented in numerous publications .

The SICTEC project will provide validation and extension of the use of this prototype instrument and deal with necessary improvements and modifications of pre-production prototypes towards the specific needs and applications of the SME partners. In particular also topics affecting commercial exploitation like e.g. application development, design for manufacturability, reliability issues, cost and throughput optimization, extension of technical specifications, and preparation of CE IVD labeling will be investigated. Applications targeted by the individual SMEs are considering fast pathogen detection for clinical use by combining the SCM technology with MALDI TOF mass spectroscopy of single bacteria, instruments for single cell cancer and stem cell research, methods for monoclonal cell line development and other in-vitro medical diagnostic applications. The anticipated innovations stemming from this research will be exploited by the involved SMEs individually as well as jointly through several innovative products targeted for different markets and applications.