Halifax life sciences startup 3D BioFibR, which is developing advanced materials derived from collagen, has launched its first two products.

One offering, dubbed μCollaFibR and pronounced “micro-colla-fibre”, is an additive for the ink used to 3D print tissues — a process called bioprinting. The second product, called simply CollaFibR, uses similar underlying technology but takes the form of a three-dimensional scaffolding for cell cultures. It offers a more realistic simulation of actual tissues than the industry standard two-dimensional culture mediums.

3D BioFibR was founded in 2020 by Chief Executive Kevin Sullivan and Chief Scientific Officer John Frampton, a biomedical engineering professor from Dalhousie University. By October of the same year, the company had raised $550,000, followed by another $700,000 of equity funding in 2021. Most of that second raise was earmarked by Sullivan, Frampton and their team to help dial in the manufacturing processes for the same products released Monday.

“Collagen is widely used in the biomedical industry because it’s so cell-friendly,” said Sullivan in an interview. “In the body, cells live in a scaffold that is made out of collagen, and that’s what gives your tissues the strength that they need to hold together.

“The industry has been using collagen for many decades, but they use it in its broken down form. In the body it’s in the form of a fibre, but industry then breaks that down to get it out of an animal and uses the individual collagen proteins. … What we’ve figured out is how to make (3D collagen scaffolds) that are strong and the right diameter, and make them at scale.”

3D BioFibR conducts all its manufacturing in-house and plans to always do so because of the technical capabilities required, as well as to better protect trade secrets and intellectual property. 

“Our manufacturing platforms are extremely efficient. We can make a very high volume of product because it’s robotics-driven,” said Sullivan.

So far, the company has 12 employees, with plans to hire several more in the coming months. Sullivan said his team’s beachhead market for the two collagen products will be unregulated applications like academic research, which regulated uses coming later.

He added that 3D BioFibR’s geographic areas of focus will be the United States — a net importer of medical technologies and the world’s largest medtech market — as well as Europe and Asia. The company will sell its products directly in the U.S. and via deals with distribution partners in other regions.

“(Local distributors) have established relationships with clients, so those customers are coming to them and buying a lot of lab materials anyways,” said Sullivan, adding that such collaborators also offer a way to overcome language barriers.

“You get more eyeballs and you tend to be able to sell better through those respected distributors.”