Dr. Jorge Madrid-Wolff earned his PhD in Photonics at EPFL (Switzerland, 2023), where he explored methods to push tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing to non-transparent materials and large-scale volumetric 3D printing. After a short postdoc, he joined Readily3D as Application Scientist. In this role, Jorge designs bespoke tools and protocols for Readily3D’s customers, with the aim of expanding the range of applications enabled by our unique technology. His work has turned around volumetric light projection systems, first for imaging and microscopy, and then for additive manufacturing. Dr. Madrid-Wolff will join us for the upcoming virtual event, The Bioprinting Frontier.

When was the first encounter you had with 3D printing?

Jorge: My first encounter with 3D printing was during my bachelor’s in physics. I was involved as a  research intern in a microscopy lab, and 3D printing made prototyping of custom pieces for our  setups so much easier. 

What inspired you to start your career? 

Jorge: Chance. I had been accepted for a PhD in 3D displays in the lab of Prof. Christophe Moser at  EPFL in Lausanne. Luckily for me, a recent exciting development in his lab (the invention of  tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing) made him suggest I changed research topic from day one. So I did, and I’m very happy it went that way. 

Who inspired you the most along this journey in 3D bioprinting?

Jorge: I truly admire the work and engineering at Formlabs. They’ve done a wonderful job making their  products simpler to use for broader audiences. And that’s how good engineering should be: be  robust but look simple. 

What motivates you the most for your work?  

Jorge: I get to talk to lots of very smart people! Designing/building tools for and with them is a lot of  fun. 

What is/are the biggest obstacle(s) in your line of work? If you have conquered them, what were  your solutions?  

Jorge: Choosing the right battles. Time is a very limited resource so you should be wise deciding where  to spend yours. Keep your ears wide open to advice from more-experienced peers.

What do you think is (are) the biggest challenge(s) in 3D Printing/bio-printing? What do you  think the potential solution(s) is (are)? 

Jorge: We have a good understanding of the engineering behind 3D printing, and researchers are mastering tissue maturation (what comes after bioprinting) at an amazing pace. We do lack,  however, a deeper understanding of the chemistry behind 3D printing. Involving chemists and doing more basic research on the chemistry of (photo)polymerization is fundamental to advancing the industrial adoption of 3D printing. 

If a higher being grants you three wishes, what would they be?  

Jorge: Infinite wishes? 

Not sure, but probably more time with family. 

What advice would you give to a smart driven college student in the “real world”? What bad  advices you heard should they ignore?  

Jorge:

“Keep it simple, but not too simple”.  

It’s easy to fall for perfectionism, but cutting corners is a no-go. 

I would take the words of those who seem to go too fast with a pinch of salt. 

What’s your favorite book you read this year and why? Alternatively, what’s your favorite book  of all times you read and why? 

Jorge: I’ll go for fiction: 

Milan Kundera’s “Immortality” is an exceptional work on identity, relations, the things that remain over time, and those that fade away.

Related Links:

Bioprinting for Cancer: Karolina Valente’s Mission at VoxCell BioInnovation
FRESH Bioprinting for Type I Diabetes with Mike Graffeo
Expert Corner blogs on bioprinting by Andrew Hudson (four-part series)

3D Bioprinting for Regenerative Medicine : Part 1

Interview with Dr. Mohammad Albanna: Humabiologics

The post Dr. Jorge Madrid-Wolff on Volumetric 3D Bioprinting & Readily3D appeared first on 3DHeals.

In this 3DHEALS event recap, we venture into the side of 3D bioprinting that features components at the micro- and nanometer scale.  Our panel of 3D microfabrication experts covered 3 different techniques — two-photon polymerization, projection micro stereolithography, and superluminescent light projection — and a wide range of applications, including cell scaffolds, microfluidics, and metallic structures.  Here are some of the highlights from our event earlier this year.

Two-photon polymerization (2PP) for cell scaffold fabrication

One of 3D printing’s core strengths is its customizability.  Methods for printing such as two-photon polymerization (2PP) are enabling this customization at the scale of cells and are changing the way we create in vitro models.  Among the growing number of use cases, researchers from Delft University of Technology have used 2PP printing to fabricate many tiny pillars either forming an array or covering a 3D cage scaffold for microglial cells to grow on.  These pillars, 0.2 micrometers in diameter and 2.5 micrometers in height, enabled them to influence the microglial cells, achieving higher proportions of the desired cell shapes.

Accelerating the creation of these 3D microglial scaffolds behind the scenes is Nanoscribe, and Dr. Benjamin Richter, the company’s Application Manager, talked to us about the tools helping to drive this research forward.

Nanoscribe develops a lineup of 2PP printers, achieving feature sizes down to 100 nanometers.  2PP is the use of a laser, such as that in the near-infrared, to solidify a resin.  Such laser beams can be controlled with rotating galvo mirrors and focused with an objective lens.  Users of the company’s Quantum X bio printer start with a CAD file, then load a substrate and resin for printing, and finally remove non-solidified material in post-processing.

Dr. Richter shared how they can print smooth cube scaffolds with organic pore shapes that provide favorable conditions for cell growth.  Due to 2PP printing’s high resolution, smooth surfaces can be obtained.  Such cubes can be used for a variety of applications, including cell culturing, tissue fabrication, and cell migration studies.

They can also print complex meshes with embedded capillary structures that have holes between 1 and 5 microns.  These mesh structures are designed as 350 x 175 x 175 micron subunits, which can be repeated and joined together to create larger tissue-like formations.

A clip from our event below shows these structures as well as how the company is using artificial intelligence to expand the 2PP design space.

Beyond cubic structures, Dr. Richter described how they can use their 2PP printers to create 3D mesh scaffolds 800 micrometers in height and 2 millimeters in diameter that fits within the small organoid wells of a microfluidic chip in 4 minutes.  These scaffolds can also be printed with a biodegradable material that degrades over time as the organoid grows.

They can also fabricate multi-material scaffolds, which can be time-consuming to align if done manually.  Now, the company’s printers can start the structure with a cell repelling resin (PEGDA) and perform automatic alignment using printed fiducial markers to subsequently apply a cell attractive resin (IP-S) at the precise position.

Projection micro stereolithography (PμSL) and microfluidic chips

Another key application of 3D microfabrication is the manufacturing of microfluidic chips to reliably grow in vivo-like tissues.  Here, we turn to Dr. Chunguang Xia, CTO and Co-Founder of Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF), who is using projection micro stereolithography (PμSL) to make these chips.

Unlike 2PP printing which solidifies its resin within a small spot-like focal volume where two photons are likely to be absorbed at the same time, PμSL creates a 2D image using ultraviolet light on resin.  Dr. Xia’s company BMF produces a series of PμSL printers with 2, 10, and 25 μm optical resolutions.  Their newer printers offer faster printing speeds by having their software analyze where to use a finer resolution and a lower resolution for the rest of the print.

Dr. Xia talked about the company’s A10 BioChip, a device with 70 channels to harbor the growth of tissue.  These 80-micron diameter channels feature pores of approximately 7 microns that allow for the movement of nutrients and waste.  Such material exchange enables the growth of larger tissue structures, avoiding the death of interior cells.  These chips open up opportunities for more cost- and time-effective drug and cosmetic testing.

They have shown that capillary perfusion within their microfluidic chips leads to the growth of thick and large colorectal HCT116 tumors compared to the lack of large tumor formation without such perfusion.  These cancer-on-a-chip technologies can help pave the way for new drug efficacy tests, adding to the options researchers have to study these cells in vitro.

Dr. Xia also mentioned their tests on growing human liver cells within the biochip.  After culturing for 7 days, these liver cells had greater viability compared to those grown in 2D.  As an example of overdose drug testing, they demonstrated that their perfused liver-on-a-chip model results in lower cell viability levels at different acetaminophen concentrations compared to 2D and static cultures.  Further research can then explore the use of this higher drug sensitivity to better simulate the toxicity of certain medications and their potential side effects in humans.

Superluminescent light projection (SLP) for nanoscale metallic structures

A critical consideration of 3D microfabrication techniques is the trade-off between resolution and cost.  Jungho Choi, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, is developing techniques to break this trade-off, specifically for nanoscale metallic structures.

The microfabrication of functional metallic structures may one day prove useful for small devices in healthcare.  For example, electronics that adhere to the skin for patient monitoring and other biosensors will require specialized forms of cost-effective manufacturing.

Fabrication of nano-scale metallic structures remains a challenge: Choi pointed out that current techniques can only produce small volumes or are expensive.  A 30-micron resolution inkjet metal printer can cost more than 250,000 U.S. dollars.  Such costs may become a hurdle for low and medium-volume manufacturing.

In a clip from our event below, Choi talked about his work in creating a low-cost optical system using superluminescent light projection (SLP) that can create structures less than 250 nm.  Instead of a costly femtosecond laser employed in nanoscale printing, they use a significantly cheaper superluminescent light emitting diode (SLED) and create focused light spots using an objective lens.

Light from the SLED is reflected off a digital micromirror device, which is an array of many microscopic mirrors that can be switched on to form a spatial pattern, similar to selectively turning on pixels of a computer screen to create an image.  Light reflected from the activated mirrors is then passed through a collimating lens and then an objective lens, ultimately hitting the ink and forming the metal nanostructures.

They observed that by annealing their nanowires on a hot plate, the printed silver nanoparticles merge, increasing the contact area between them and achieving conductivity levels about 1/18th that of bulk silver, comparable to multi-photon photoreduction printing.  Choi is looking to build upon this work to create 3D features as well as perform multi-material prints with polymers in the future.

Join us for our future 3DHEALS events

3D microfabrication has immense potential for future applications, with avenues in Dr. Richter’s two-photon polymerization, Dr. Xia’s projection micro stereolithography, and Choi’s superluminescent light projection.  Techniques such as the ones featured by our panelists open up the world of micro- and nano-scale devices to 3D printing for healthcare.  To join our events live and stay up to date with 3D bioprinting, subscribe to receive updates for our upcoming webinars.

About the Author:

Peter Hsu

Peter Hsu is an editorial intern for 3DHEALS.  He is currently an undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and studies bioengineering with a focus on cell and tissue engineering.  He is also minoring in computer science with interests in artificial intelligence and image processing.  Peter conducts research on using computer vision methods to analyze human tissue images and improving the robustness of machine learning workflows.  He is interested in the use of AI to assist tissue engineering and bioprinting research for medical applications.  He is passionate about science communication and leads STEM outreach lessons at schools in the central Illinois area.

Related Links:

3D Microfabrication 2.0 (On Demand, 2024)

3D Microfabrication: Medical Applications (On Demand, 2022)
3D Printing Organ on a Chip, Microfluidics Devices  (On Demand, 2023)

Event Recap: Point of Care 3D Printing
Event Recap: 3D Bioprinting Biofabricating Skin Components
Event Recap: Point of Care 3D Printing
Event Recap: 3D Printing and AI in Orthopedics
Event Recap: Innovation in Melt-Electrowriting (MEW) & 3D Printing

Event Recap: In Silico Simulation for Medtech and Biopharma

The post Event Recap: 3D Microfabrication appeared first on 3DHeals.

–Pulling Back the Curtain

All of the preceding articles in this series have concentrated on current challenges to 3D bioprinting as well as ones on the horizon that are now coming into focus. By identifying key barriers to the field, we gated the technology into four major stages which are:

Stage 1: Lacks the ability to print using cells and/or proteins with high fidelity.
Stage 2: Prints cells and/or proteins at high fidelity, but no significant tissue function upon print completion.
Stage 3: Combines an immature 3D printed tissue with a coordinated maturation system, resulting in a functional tissue for use or study.
Stage 4: Produces a tissue or organ that is functional immediately upon print completion.

As we learn to print soft extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins with higher precision (Stage 1 to 2), we will begin to print structures that better recapitulate blood vessels that aid in keeping tissues alive with the assistance of more complicated bioreactors to mature them for implantation (Stage 2 to 3). Stage 4, however, is the furthest level of advancement possible to the point of being science fiction. Much of the difficulty in Stage 3 lies in combining siloed areas of research together into a coherent pipeline. To use a historical example, successfully launching a rocket led to controlling its trajectory which led to returning it to earth intact. These gated steps were each realistic challenges and had all been done in separate lower risk scenarios, but the successful lunar landing in 1969 represented a monumental achievement. Stage 4, however, represents something of jumping to light speed to continue using space exploration as an analogy. In Part 1 of this series, we discussed lifting the veil off the headlines surrounding the field to gain a sober view of its future. While the first three parts of this series focused mainly on technical challenges, this final piece is meant to follow through on dispelling some of the more fantastical claims on the potential future of bioprinting a full organ as frequently seen in headlines (Fig. 1).

Simply put, the challenges of bioprinting fall into two major categories:

• Addressable: a discrete challenge that is not currently solved, but a path to a solution can be hypothesized.
• Fundamental: a core assumption upholding the field that has yet to be answered.

Addressable problems: Referring to space exploration as an archetypal example, an addressable challenge is creating a zero-waste environment where all resources like water and food are replenishable with the aid of solar energy. This challenge is not trivial, but already being tackled in the International Space Station. Some of the large, but addressable, challenges to printing an organ are listed below.

• Patient-specific cell culture: Using patient-derived cells reduces a large risk factor of the immune response, but the challenge here is analogous to the clothing industry. Off-the-rack clothes are affordable but come in limited sizes while bespoke garments fit perfectly at a high labor cost. The difficulty in culturing numerous patient-derived cells is the labor and logistical tracking required. Although one cell type might make up a substantial portion of an organ (cardiomyocytes in the heart), that does not mean the minority components (pacemaker, endothelial, vascular smooth muscle cells, etc.) can be done away with. Obtaining and culturing all these various cell lines in separate media prior to printing will be a nightmare in coordination.
• High–throughput cell culture: A major bottleneck to tissue engineering research is simply the rate at which human cells can be cultured. Expanding culture by increasing surface area scales only as a squared function, while volume scales cubically. The current practice of culturing in more 2D flasks will eventually reach a breaking point of inefficiency when billions of cells are needed per round of an experiment. Fortunately, there are several areas of research trying to grow cells efficiently in 3D such as carrier beads and tissue scaffolds.
• Multi–material printing: If each cell type can be made into its own bioink, then printing with a litany of inks accurately becomes crucial. The difficulty here can become that print time increases drastically with each new bioink added. The good news is that this challenge is mechanical (for syringe-based printers), and more of a matter of implementation than creating from scratch. Many machine systems can move with extreme precision in 3D, they have just yet to be combined on a bioprinter system.
• Regulations: Without getting drawn into a discussion about what size of a role regulatory agencies should play in medicine, it is important to acknowledge that it will be a significant gatekeeper. The time and money required to administer animal and human trials in pharmaceuticals take roughly a decade and a billion dollars for one drug. To attempt to shift this over to a bespoke, patient-specific, cell-based medical device where the recipe changes for literally every patient is a quality control challenge for both manufacturers and regulators.

Fundamental problems: Reverting back to space exploration, a fundamental problem with travel between the stars lies in achieving speeds even 10% of the speed of light. For reference, Voyager (the farthest man-made object from earth) is travelling at 1/18,000^th the speed of light. In the same sense, there are many far-off, fundamental challenges to bioprinting an organ that have yet to be answered, of which some are listed below.

• Assuming function will follow form: A core assumption in the field of tissue engineering is that if we use a native tissue as a cheat sheet and organize cells in the same general manner, we will develop an equivalent tissue. A mature tissue is a result of an immensely complex system of developmental biology where form and function complement one another from the microscopic scale upward. Simply placing cells in the same general spatial arrangement and thinking it equivalent to an organ could turn out to be analogous to throwing lumber, tubing, insulation, and wiring together in the shape of a building and thinking it will work just like the neighbor’s house. Current engineered tissues are fortunate if they produce even 10% of native tissue function. The belief that a printed organ will function equivalent to a native organ immediately after being printed assumes a lot about the value (or lack thereof) in allowing tissues to mature over long periods of time.
• Creating a tumor instead of a tissue: Tissue engineering is heavily focused on keeping large numbers of cells alive by trying to vascularize 3D tissues. There is a likelihood that placing such an emphasis on vascularizing a tissue that we will then realize what we have created is more akin to a tumor than healthy tissue. Aside from the microvascular organizational differences serving as a potential canary in the coalmine, the next question becomes, “When this engineered tissue is implanted, will it display contact inhibition?”. Contact inhibition is a regulatory phenomenon in healthy cells in which cells slow their proliferation rate when they begin to contact one another. Tumor cells, on the other hand, continue to grow unregulated, resulting in tumor progression and metastasis. A potential risk to tissue engineering is focusing on maximizing cell growth and angiogenesis to speed up tissue maturation while increasing the risk of unintentionally building tumor-like tissues that grow out of control when implanted.
• Developing better alternatives: No technology exists solely on its own. Alternatives can spring up nearly overnight and decimate established players similar to how smartphones have largely replaced personal digital cameras. While 3D bioprinting is being researched, so are other technologies that could intentionally or unintentionally threaten it. These disruptions can come in the form of either mechanically or bioengineered alternatives. Potential mechanical alternatives could be ventricular assist devices, dialysis machines, and insulin pumps that continue to improve over their current versions as to potentially lower the need for engineered hearts, kidneys, and pancreases, respectively. In terms of bioengineered solutions, the genetic modification of pigs to remove the threat of donor rejection in humans could potentially solve many organ shortage problems by effectively relying on the pig as the bioprinter and incubator. While none of these solutions are guaranteed, the potential still exists. Even if one or several solutions end up a reality, it will come at the cost of bioprinting, but it is undoubtedly an immense gain for society.

The combination of both addressable and fundamental problems runs in opposition to the frequent claim that artificial organs are “5 to 10 years away” just as they allegedly were 5 to 10 years ago. Even if funding to the field continues to increase, I am reminded of the phrase “9 women cannot produce a child in 1 month”, as money is not the only barrier to technological innovation. The persistent stiff-arming of expectations runs the risk of a funding ‘winter’ for bioprinting as has happened in other fields. Notable funding winters occurred in artificial intelligence (AI) which went through two in the 1970s and 1990s as promises about AI potential did not match with the computational power required at the time (Fig. 2).

There is a concerning parallel between the claims touted in media headlines and the current ability to 3D bioprint organs just as AI researchers in the 1970s claimed a Jetsons-style future was only years away. Although 3D bioprinting is a new and endlessly exciting field, I ask that researchers demonstrate the courage to be realistic, lest we risk trapping our expectations in the Land of Oz, where bioprinted “organs” are forever and always 5 years away.

About the Author:

Andrew Hudson

Chief Operations Officer, Fluidform

Andrew is a co-founder of FluidForm and leads the development, manufacturing, and scale-up efforts of LifeSupport™. His research focuses on developing the next generation of techniques for vascularizing 3D-bioprinted tissues to improve the clinical translational potential of tissue-engineered therapies.

Related Articles:

The Yellow Brick Road of 3D Bioprinting (Part 1)

The Yellow Brick Road of 3D Bioprinting (Part 2): Soft Is Hard

The Yellow Brick Road of 3D Bioprinting (Part 3): Maturation

3D Bioprinting Substrate Stiffness – Often Overlooked, But Always at Work

3D Bioprinting in Space?

Printing the Future: An Introduction to Additive Manufacturing in Space

3D Bioprinting: Chiasm of Art, Design, Science, Technology, Evolution

The post 3D Bioprinting: The Yellow Brick Road (Part 4) appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

Imagine a human organ of the future.

What does that look like in your mind’s eye? Does it look like something humans are naturally endowed with, something totally new, or something in-between? What is this organ’s function? Does it replicate natural function or somehow provide enhanced function? If so in what ways does it provide enhanced function? How does it work? Is it an implant, an extension or something else? Is it made of the host’s material or an alternative? How does it integrate with the body and other systems of the body? Does it grow with the body? How does it heal or enhance the host? How does the organ heal and enhance itself? What does it empower or enable the host to do or be?

This is where bioprinting starts for me: thinking of healing and enhancing the body, and what the body, medicine, and healthcare will look like in the future; then conducting research, designing, and using our technologies to help us to move towards that future. I work as a bioartist, leveraging science and exponential technology to explore what it means to be human ( www.amykarle.com). I use bioprinting and biotechnology in my inquiry because this arena carries the potential to drastically change what it means to be human as we now know it.

Bioprinting is not only revolutionary, it’s evolutionary.

Considering all of the research and advancements that have occurred in 3D printing, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine thus far, the ability to bio-fabricate personalized replacement parts, and even organs appear to be on the horizon. When organs can be bioprinted on-demand for the specific needs of a patient, an external source would no longer be required – neither from artificial parts nor from a living or deceased human or animal donor. With bioprinting, genetic material could be provided from a patient’s own body for the basis of their own new bio-printed part, greatly reducing the risk of rejection. Furthermore, the new part could be tailored to a patient’s particular body size and structure. This new part would not have to look like the original part, it could be streamlined, and designed differently to perform the necessary function. When we think of creating replacement parts and enhancements in this way – bioprinting with the body’s own base materials to replace and regenerate the body – this is not only revolutionary, it’s evolutionary as well.

In addition to the creativity and technologies that it takes to envision and create replacement parts, we also have to approach this with both curiosity and caution to imagine many future case scenarios for the applications of bioprinting, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. For example, if we get to the point where we can create custom replacement parts, this could potentially expand our life expectancy to far longer than the current human lifespan. I foresee that personalized bioprinted parts will be initially introduced for people who medically require grafts, repairs, and for organ transplant candidates, then will cascade into replacing parts when people reach far later stages of life. If we could replace our parts as we age, we would theoretically have a younger body and could theoretically live much longer lifespans – as one example. The implication of this will be profound to our society and to our species. Embarking on this requires that we ask many difficult critical questions, employ ethics and exceptionally responsible use of biotechnology.

The amount of awareness, thoughtful consideration and innovation required for bioprinting is immense.

Bioprinting applications range from drug development, toxicology studies, tissue engineering, and organ transplantation. The applications can be extended into other research fields as well including (but not limited to) botany and archeology. Not only does this technology make working with cell assembly and complex tissue constructs available to researchers and scientists, but also artists and designers. For a large number of applications, it enables us to envision what we may bring to life: new formulas in nature, organoids, and parts as we’ve never seen before. If we were to create such forms and formulas, what would be intelligent to create? What would be life-sustaining and life-enhancing? These are some of the most fundamental questions that must be addressed when using our technologies that have the potential to permanently alter our lives, our species, our environment, and our world.

What has not yet been imagined is the real potential of bioprinting.

When one begins to acquire knowledge about the fundamentals of bioprinting processes, it’s important to realize that how-to knowledge of producing a physical bioprint only begins to scrape the tip of the iceberg. Approaching bioprinting is not just about how-to knowledge, it requires asking poignant questions, and thinking expansively, exponentially and creatively. Exponential thinking is analogous to holding a tree’s seed, envision it through to a forest ecosystem,  and picturing the whole process to an outcome like coal’s role in the circular economy. *(Ie: seed>tree> forest>death/decomposition>time/pressure/chemical/physical change>coal>use of coal>understanding coal is a non-renewable resource and searching for new options> considering how to change the way we design and make things to create a new system that can meet our needs without stripping our natural resources, nor creating waste or pollution).

With an infinite landscape of yet-undiscovered applications of bioprinting, one has the conceptual luxury of brainstorming life cycles within life cycles, thinking expansively about synthetic growth across various platforms, and envisioning transformations of the living print after it enters a new and often entirely different habitat, host organism, or atmosphere… and then further thinking what will happen from there.

It can be thrilling to think about what’s possible by affecting living things with other living processes where anything can and will react.

Bioprinting attempts to solve near-impossible challenges by designing multiple life cycles into an original seed. Forming biological material in time-based creation, bioprinting supports the creation of new forms with outstanding combinations of mechanical, material, biological, biochemical, and even electrical properties that can enable specific processes or outcomes to flourish or be muted.

The software, hardware, and materials science are mostly contained compared to what happens after this “seed” is planted inside an entirely new and sometimes volatile ecosystem. Living cells can fail, be attacked, set off unforeseen reactions, or can offend something else that depends on survival.

It is vital that we consider and think through a multitude of various positive and negative outcomes and then work towards those goals that are for the best and highest good of the planet and humanity. Bioprinting can permanently alter humanity, society, our ecosystem, and our planet. We can use these technological advancements for our good or to our demise, the outcome is not inherent in the tool itself, it is in the user’s intention, how the tool is used and how the outcome may affect the future. It is of vital importance that we work across discipline, culture, institutions, and governments to co-conceive the future we want to create, then use our tools and technologies to help us to get there.

How can you / your industry use bioprinting?

When embarking on bioprinting work, I consider the following:

• Team/Partners
• Resources
• Research
• Design (function, efficiency, ease of use)
• Art (conceptual meaning)
• Science /Technology
• Materials
• Craftsmanship
• Impacts on Humanity
• Scenarios
• Philosophy / Ethics
• Measures of Success

Regardless of industry, I encourage you to consider these aspects in bioprinting projects as each point is potential to add value.

In any industry, to think about what can be created, we have to envision and experiment creatively and imaginatively. Research isn’t enough; problem-solving, creativity and an open mind are necessary to innovate. At every step of the process, the ability to generate new ideas and connections among ideas is a critical component to bring those ideas to life. It requires working through the process with an open mind, learning as we go, and a willingness to alter our course as needed.

The greatest way to innovate is to make, to break, and then to create again.

The greatest way to innovate is to research, create, make, break, and then research and create again, retaining curiosity and innovation the entire time. This mindset of makers, creatives, and innovators is something that artists and engineers’ practice regularly, and a trait set of value to practice and develop in all fields.

Working through bioprinting also requires exploratory, imagination, and supportive collaborations that enable experimentation across disciplines and collaborating with other fields to create outcomes that are more significant than any field or individual or company could achieve on their own.

3D printing and bioprinting are spawned equally from the fields of art, design, science, and technology to positively impact humanity.

First introductions to bioprinting generally make it clear how bioprinting is based in science and technology, however, the art and design aspect cannot be overlooked as necessary parts of the process for a successful outcome. The specification and design of the experiment, as well as the specification and design of the final product, are central. Technically, good design means that the product functions well, that it is streamlined into an efficient and easy to use outcome that provides answers to a problem and/or helps people make sense of their world. To design is to problem solve. Executing solutions with fine craftsmanship is the quality that comes from creating with passion, care, and attention to detail that not only supports its function but is also admired and appreciated for its elegance in execution. Art is the consideration and thoughtful integration of what the aesthetics and form language convey, and the emotional aspect of the work. The part of the work that conveys deep fundamental truths carried throughout every step of the process from concept to completion.

The overall process requires research, investigation, stimulating imagination, envisioning creative approaches, designing a study / designing a product, and executing it with attention to detail and outcomes. This outlines the process of artists and scientists alike. Asking poignant questions helps point us to more poignant answers (or more questions). Science and art are both dedicated to asking big questions like What is true? What is the purpose/meaning? What is important?  A bioprinter is simply a tool, but it is also the potential of the questions, designs, and meaning behind those questions and designs that can bring forms to life and even help to positively impact the world.

About the Author:

Amy Karle is an internationally award-winning bioartist whose work can be seen as artifacts of a speculative future where digital, physical and biological systems merge. She leverages body-based investigation, science, and technology to create art that examines material and ethereal aspects of life. As an artist and designer, Karle is also a provocateur and a futurist, opening future visions of how technology could be utilized to support and enhance humanity while making advancements in the technology towards those goals in the process.

Karle has shown her work in 54 international exhibitions, including in 2019: at Centre Pompidou, Paris; in 2018 at Beijing Media Arts Biennale; Ars Electronica in Tokyo and Beijing; Centrum Nauki Kopernik in Warsaw and the Stanford National Accelerator Laboratory in California, USA. She is regularly invited to share her innovations and insights as an expert speaker at prestigious events and think tanks worldwide including 3DHeals, the Salzburg Global Seminar, Innovative City Forum, X-Summit, and Future Innovators Summit.

Karle is Co-Founder of Conceptual Art Technologies, has developed registered patents and marks in the medical field, was Artist in Residence at Autodesk, has been named one of the “Most Influential Women in 3D Printing” (All3DP 2016, 2017) and was Grand Prize Winner of the “YouFab Global Creative Award” (2018). As an Artist Diplomat through the U.S. Department of State American Arts Incubator (2017-18), Karle was tasked with public diplomacy, social innovation, and women’s empowerment in STEAM. The long-term goals of her work are to continue to pioneer in the bioart field and make contributions to society, technology, and healthcare in the process. 

Related Articles:

3D Bioprinting Personalized Brain Tissues

Interview: Kim Homan, Kidney Tissue Engineering

How Far Ahead: A Look Back at 2018 in the World of Bioprinting

The post 3D Bioprinting: Chiasm of Art, Design, Science, Technology, Evolution appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

Nothing excites me more than to see the progress we have made in the world of bioprinting. It really hasn’t been that long ago when the first idea of bioprinted organs came about, since then many research groups have jumped onto the bandwagon of bioprinting, and in the last 5 years, we have witnessed the burst of bioprinting companies that spun out of academic labs. To evaluate where we are today, here’s a quick recap of the progress made in 2018, by companies and research institutes propelling the bioprinting industry. 

On research innovations, several companies announced key scientific milestones that are fulfilling the promises of bioprinting. In April 2018, Organovo announced key breakthrough developments in their bioprinted liver tissue models for evaluating a spectrum of liver diseases and intestinal tissue models. This breakthrough is allowing researchers to develop new drugs for non-alcoholic fatty liver tissue diseases (NAFLD) more effectively at early stage development. One of the newest bioprinting startups, Biolife4D, announced their success in bioprinting a human cardiac patch, achieving a major milestone demonstrating their ability to 3D print human cardiac tissue derived from induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology. Our local Bay Area resident bioprinting company, Prellis Biologics, co-founded by two female scientists, announced the first pre-vascularized tissue scaffolds, Tissue Blanks TM designed for building complex 3D cell and tissue constructs. This is another major milestone which has, in the past, prohibited researchers to build larger constructs due to the lack of vasculature.

On the technology side, more innovative platforms are being developed. Poietis, a French-based bioprinting company, announced the launch of their next generation laser-assisted 4D bioprinting system. Aether, another Bay Area resident company, announced their new AI-powered 3D medical imaging software designed to enhance bioprinting capabilities, especially for organ printing. Allevi partnered up with Made in Space to create the first zero-gravity tissue 3D printer (Allevi ZeroG) and Cellink announced their partnership with Prellis Biologics to create the first holograph-based volumetric 3D bioprinter, Holograph-X. Both equally exciting developments in the bioprinting world to be looking forward to in perhaps 2019. 

The year of 2018 was also a year where more research collaborations are being made. Aspect Biosystems announced several academic collaborations with various universities including a project to 3D-bioprint skin with Dalhouise University. In addition, they also announced a collaboration with JSR corporation to create liver tissue. Poietis also partnered with Prometheus to develop high precision 3D bioprinting of tissue engineered advanced therapeutic medical products for skeletal regeneration. The Advanced Materials + BioEngineering Research (AMBER) center headquartered in Dublin has partnered with JnJ to tackle osteoarthritis by bioprinting implants that regenerate. 

On the funding side, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued $2.6M in grants toward 3D bioprinting and biomedical research last year. Awardees included Harvard University, Carnegie-Mellon University, Rutgers University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Oxford spin-out bioprinting company, Oxsybio raised $10M GBP (~$14M USD) in Series A funding last year. Biolife4D initiated their Regulation A+ equity crowdfund investment offering in February 2018, this round is expected to close end of January 2019. 

With so much progress being made already in 2018, I cannot wait to see what lies ahead for us in this coming year. Companies and academics in the field are increasing collaborative efforts to bring together a convergence of technologies and knowledge that is only going to help us make in-roads and continued progress in healthcare and regenerative medicine.

About the author:

Mayasari Lim

Dr. Mayasari Lim is the West Coast Regional Account Manager for RoosterBio and an active contributor to the bioprinting community. She was founder and CEO of SE3D, a startup focused on bringing bioprinting into the classroom to support future workforce development. Previously, she was an assistant professor in Bioengineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her research expertise included stem cell bioprocess engineering, bioprinting, and regenerative medicine. She also mentors and teaches leadership and management courses at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership at UC Berkeley. Dr. Lim obtained her Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and her B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley.

Articles you may also like:

Interview: Jon Rowley, Founder & Chief Product Officer, RoosterBio

Five Things in 2018 That Shook Our World — of Healthcare 3D Printing and Bioprinting

The post How Far Ahead: A Look Back at 2018 in the World of Bioprinting appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

Living cells need oxygen to survive. Since the advent of 3D bioprinting, doctors and scientists have been asked, “When can we transplant a 3D bioprinted heart, a kidney, or a lung?” 

It is tantalizing and exciting for the human race to dream of using a straightforward technology to address pressing medical problems for the millions of people suffering from organ failure. It is so exciting that mock-ups of heart and lung structures are printed as examples of the power of bioprinting to re-create any structure–well, almost any structure. 

There has been a technical problem, a tiny one: capillaries. Capillaries are the 5-10 micrometer blood vessels (1/10^th the size of a human hair) that are the primary place of oxygen exchange throughout our bodies. Capillaries are so small that sometimes single red blood cells fold sideways to make it through. All organisms that rely on oxygen and have bodies larger than 300 micrometers have some version of capillaries.

Nozzle-based printers are the standard in bioprinting. The problem is that no nozzle-based printing system can print at a high enough resolution to build capillaries. 

Every tissue in the human body is supplied with oxygen by capillaries; in our lungs, capillaries are where oxygen is absorbed when we breathe. 

Capillaries are ubiquitous but are distributed at different densities in different tissues. The maximum spacing of a capillary is dependent on oxygen diffusion, which is about 250 to 300 micrometers through living tissues. Without oxygen cells simply begin to die off, sometimes in a matter of minutes. In your heart, which is always beating and requires quite a bit of oxygen, capillaries are only 20 micrometers apart. In the brain, it is estimated that each neuron has it’s own capillary to ensure it has plenty of oxygen to function properly. In low metabolic activity tissues, capillaries are spaced further apart, as far as 250-300 microns apart in fat tissue. 

The oxygen diffusion limits are evolutionarily conserved, and though researchers have experimented with alternatives to capillaries in bioprinted tissue–larger structures that can be printed at around 50 micrometers–none of them have worked. These larger blood vessels have fallen short because the surface area to volume ratio is not sufficient for oxygen delivery without disrupting the function of the tissue. In short, you can build larger tubes, but those larger tubes take up most of the room in the tissue and don’t allow for tissue function. Even more importantly, kidneys, lungs, and livers require the large surface area to volume ratios provided by numerous capillaries to function: for filtration, oxygen absorption, and removal of toxins. 

3D bioprinting hit a technical wall when applied to bioprinting organ. The resolution of even the best 3D bioprinting systems is too low (by about 100-fold) to create capillaries, leaving the dream of true organ replacement out of reach—until now. 

Even with resolution and speed limitations, human tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting have produced fantastic biological replacements for cartilage and bone, demonstrating that 3D bioprinting for non-metabolically active tissues works well for human transplantation. The technology can yield real medical solutions. 

Patients have had 3D printed tissue successfully transplanted: their bodies have adapted and incorporated the engineered tissue as their own and even developed vasculature post-transplantation. The engineered tissue has become a living tissue. 

In my career as a Physiologist and Biophysicist studying immune responses and cell-cell interactions, I found the resolution problem and the associated limits in biological fabrication fascinating. Routinely in the laboratory, we used a laser-based method to image cell-cell interactions in real time, in living tissues. It was common-place to take full 3D videos of tissues and tiny capillaries at resolutions much higher than what was necessary to print a human capillary.

In thinking about the millions of people that could benefit from organ and tissue replacement, a single burning question stuck with me: if we can see these blood vessels, why can’t we build them? 

Laser-based printing has been utilized in numerous fields to achieve high-resolution structures, from semiconductors to drug delivery devices. However, this printing method has been slow, and the complexity of human capillary structures made the speed of laser-based printing prohibitive for building much beyond a few small structures. The manufacturing method was not scalable to anything much larger than a millimeter. Millimeter-sized kidneys weren’t going to solve the world’s human organ shortage problem. 

I left academia with this burning question in mind, and I spent months researching a way to make a high-resolution, high-speed bioprinting system. These were the scary times when people talk about in an entrepreneur’s life: I turned down good job offers, and I didn’t take a paycheck for 8 months. To support myself, I sold the condo I had scraped together enough savings to buy while in grad school.

But I found the solution.

By combining methods from several fields of imaging and changing a few parameters, I had an idea on paper that looked like we could solve the final major engineering problem in building human organs. Prellis Biologics was founded (Prellis originated from the words “printed trellis”). Patents were filed, we brought in some initial capital, and we started building. And physics and technology worked! It was in the summer of 2017, as part of IndieBio Class 5, and my team was overjoyed. 

We can print with or without cells present as we use a far-red non-toxic laser-based system, lending the technology to high-resolution cell deposition as well as a generation of vascular tissue structures that can be seeded with any cell type. These are key steps toward full organ development, but these structures are a solution in and of themselves too. Vascularized tissue allows pharmaceutical companies to push the boundaries for human tissue testing and develops better therapeutics faster, and researchers in many sectors are in desperate need of larger tissue models. 

I believe in the democratization of science and research. I believe that not one team but many will be able to make deeply important advances for human health with this technology in hand. 

Today, we are producing Vascularized Tissue Blanks™ for researchers whose cells of choice can be cultured alone or with other cells of interest. More than eight distinct primary and human cell lines have been tested with our large format structures, and not only do the cells grow, they seem to grow better than they do in two-dimensional tissue culture dishes.  We are allowing researchers to grow their own cells, transplant, and test therapeutics in ways that were not previously possible.

And to support innovation in this field, Prellis Biologics has partnered with Cellink to provide dedicated tissue engineering and regenerative medicine researchers access to our technology. We have released a printing system that allows researchers to design and build their own vascularized structures in a CAD program, print them, and use them for cell culture, transplantation, therapeutics, and complex in vitro culture studies. 

The future of human tissue bioprinting is bright–nearly as bright as our lasers. Having solved the vascularization problem, we believe it is only a matter of time before viable human tissues and organs are available for the millions in need of a life-saving tissue transplant. 

About the Author:

Dr. Matheu founded Prellis Biologics in October 2016 with a design for an optical-based printing system on paper and a vision to create fully vascularized human tissues and organs for transplantation. Melanie’s combined PhD-level specialties in laser-based microscopy, Immunology, Chemistry, Physiology, and Biophysics have allowed her to bridge the gap between seemingly disparate fields to make real human organ engineering a reality. During her academic career, Dr. Matheu authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and a book chapter detailing methods and approaches for high-resolution imaging in tissues. Melanie was inspired to find a way to reverse-engineer laser-based imaging systems into a printer when she realized that the final roadblock in building human organs for transplant was a well-defined engineering problem: How can microvasculature be printed fast enough to build human tissues? Prellis Biologics technology solves this problem by partially decoupling printing speed from resolution with a novel patent-pending laser-based projection system.

Dr. Matheu’s vision is to shift the focus of health and medicine from palliative care to curative solutions, giving patients their lives back.

Want to be heard? Submit to our blogs. (It may take a few seconds to load the page.)

Related articles:

Fundraising in Healthcare 3D Printing, Part I: So, You Want to Pitch?

Fundraising in Healthcare 3D Printing, Part II: Are you Printing Money?

3D Bioprinting Personalized Brain Tissues

The post 3D Bioprinting Organ Shortage: Putting Bio back into Bioprinting appeared first on 3DHeals.

— How Close are We to Artificial Tissues and Organs?

May 3–5, 2017, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Often, whenever people hear the term “healthcare 3D printing”, a common response from them is, “yes, I saw that on the news, are we really printing kidneys?” Although the field of healthcare 3d printing includes a much wider range of healthcare applications using 3D printing (or additive manufacture) technologies, what 3D bioprinting can do (or not do) has been a mystery to many. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to find out myself during the first “Printing the Future of Therapeutics in 3D” conference, in Vancouver, Canada.

The conference lasts three days, and was co-hosted by Dr. Christian Naus from University of British Columbia, and CEO of Aspect Biosystems, Tamer Mohamed. The event gathered many leading scientists in the field, including MIT, Harvard, UBC, UW, among others. A few commercial representatives were also present, including Aspect Biosystems, Biobots, GSK, and of course, a few lawyers.

I had a chance to join on last day of the conference. There was no theatric display of new technologies, but plenty of in-depth scientific presentations and intimate networking and discussions. It was reassuring to see an elite line up of speakers because some questions will be answered, and if there is no answer, at least an honest “I don’t know”.

What are 3D bioprinting scientists working on?

• • Generate 3D complex disease model such as spinal neural tissues (Dr. Stephainie Willerth’s work), brain glioma model (Wun Chey Sin’s work). One can think of these as the “Rapid Prototyping” of a disease using 3D printing.

• Tissue engineering for tissue replacement, for example, musculoskeletal tissue (Dr. Grainne Cunnifee). One can think of this moving from RP to “production” level of bioprinting.

By the way, none of these is used on actual human.

What is the connection between 3D Printing and bioprinting?

– Both processes use the concept of additive manufacture, which means a digitally controlled manufacture process by adding layers of materials one on top of another to eventually create a 3D object. In the case of bioprinting, the material is often biocompatible materials laced with cellular components. Similar to regular 3D printing, bioprinting also uses common processes like FDM, or SLA. However, because the end goal of bioprinting is to produce a living piece of tissue, modifcations are needed to create the type of biocompatible structures.

– Some updates in bioprinting techniques include:

o New SLA bioprinting technique that uses visible light spectrum (rather than UV light) by Dr. Keekyoung Kim

o New microfluidics-enabled bioprinter that promises high throughput 3D bioprinting option by Dr. Axel Guenther.

o New SLA printing technology for making lab-on-a-chip by Dr. Albert Folch.

Microfluidic Art by FolchLab

How long before we can see an organ 3D printed?

Needless to say, the implication of 3D printing implantable human organs not only means millions of lives saved or improved, it also means a complete disruption of the trillion-dollar healthcare industry. Transplant or not, having a replacement tissue or organ will completely disrupt the supply chain of healthcare. The only problem is that, we are NOT there yet. FDA regulation is a foreseeable challenge to synthetic organs, but there is currently no engineered tissue used for treatment purpose in human body. Researchers and CEOs alike are reluctant in answering when we will have a true human tissue replacement. However, what is in the immediate horizon is a potentially scalable industry focusing on how to improve current therapeutic R&D pipeline with advanced technologies like bioprinting. However, even establishing value of bioprinting as a more effective disease model for pharma R&D is still in early stage, said Dr. Claire Jeong from GSK. At the end of the day, it will require a collaborative effort between academia and industry to fund, develop, and fully commercialize the technology for a scalable solution. One of the most important recent progress is the establishment of IQ Consortium, where the pharma companies provide a guideline for startups and academia for product development. It is worth a look.

Remembering how hard it was for 3DHEALS to find the bioprinting community two years ago when we just started, it is very exciting to me personally to see the community is finally taking shape. Most importantly, I saw a real bioprinter in action for the first time in my life.

The post 3D Bioprinting: Truth is Beautiful appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

Background:
3D printing (also known as additive manufacture) is technically “invented” in the 1980s[1]. It represents a new method of digital manufacture by adding thin layers of material one on top of another based on a digital blueprint. The concept of creating physical objects based on digital data in a layer-by-layer fashion was quickly extended to bio-printing, where the raw material is bio-ink or stem cells. In a way, 3D printing represents an evolved form of human-computer interaction.

Main Technical Advantages:

For the healthcare sector, the main technical advantages of 3D printing include the following:

1. Mass customization: Perfect examples include the Invisalign and hearing aids. Although each individual brace or hearing aid is unique to the patient, the production process is highly automated and in much larger scale than their traditional counterparts.

2. Digital design and fabrication for the human body: Earlier 3D printing product for the human body focuses on exoskeleton, prosthesis, and wearable, in light of much lower regulatory barriers and concern for safety with such a new manufacture process. However, as the industry grows with new materials and printing technologies, more devices are being invented and approved for other more “internal” treatments. 3D printed metal implants are a great example of that. The most ambitious of all is bio-printing, where personalized replacement tissue can be “manufactured” on demand. Many believe bioprinting will play a major role in human organogenesis, or manufacture of human organs. The recent HBO series “West World” adopted this concept to an extreme, but not too far from what could be possible in a decade or so.

3. Remote care via internet: Because of the availability of the internet, providing tangible healthcare to rural areas, third world countries, or even in the battle field is now a possibility, because the digital blue print can be transferred anyway via the information highway at a very low cost. This eventually will also be critical for space travel.

4. Accelerate medical education: Practices make perfect. As long as humanity still depends on human physicians for surgeries, the need of haptic-experience-based training will always be there. However, given a growing aging population, current pace of medical training will not meet the demand for healthcare providers in the near future. Having physical simulation products like 3D printed models will allow the training process to shorten in duration for individual trainees and therefore decrease the supply-demand mismatch in healthcare labor force. Even after school, surgeons facing rare, complex, high-stake procedures can benefit from having these simulation models according to more and more evidences.[2]

5. Collaboration with other emerging technologies (Artificial intelligence, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), robotics, and etc.): At the end of the day, 3D printing is just another extension of computer science, very much like other emerging technologies like VR/AR and AI. It is a new iteration of of an older tool, computers. It is a foreseeable future that many of these emerging technologies or tools will work together in many different healthcare applications. For example, several companies are already working on how AI can improve the visualization and segmentation process in 3D printing CAD software.

From an outcome perspective, these advantages translate into the following: 1) Cutting cost and time of existing practice 2) Invention of new procedures, concept, and products previously inconceivable, and finally 3) New perspectives on digital health.

Past Trend:

However, it is only recently the public, especially mainstream healthcare sector, starts to welcome this technology with excitements. There are a few speculations on why things are different now than then. First, regulatory barrier appears less opaque. The FDA website now has a significant amount of information and links on 3D printing.[3] About 85 3D printing based medical devices are FDA cleared in 2016.[4] Second, several major 3D printing patents are expiring or have already expired. This translates into potential more rapid innovations and growth. Finally, investment into the field is trending upwards. In 2012 President Obama’s showed visible support of the additive manufacture industry through the creation of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII), and the U.S. government investing in 3D printing is the biggest in the world. Several companies made a number of large internal and external investments in recent years, showing confidence in the growth of the field.[5]

Future opportunities:

Terry Wohlers, the leading 3DP industry analyst, estimated in the 2015 Wohlers Report that the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, consisting of all AM products and services worldwide, grew 25.9% YOY to $5.165 billion in 2015. The report also estimated 13% of the market[6] to be in medical, which puts the size of the healthcare 3D market at about $671M. As impressive as the numbers, however, if 3D printing industry continues to only grow at a pace of about 20% per year, it will still be an insignificant fraction of the multi-trillion dollar manufacture industry in decades to come. True adoption of a new technology like 3D printing requires accelerated innovative application of the technology, in addition to continued development of the new tool itself. That is, having the best machines, software, and materials would mean little if there is no meaningful application to employ these. Thus, the most important element in adopting a new technology is people.

A quick survey of healthcare 3D printing companies shows just that.

In 1997, Zia Chishti and Kelsey Wirth founded Align Technology Inc, arguably one of the most successful 3D printing company in history. The inception of the company came from Zia’s own personal experience as a patient with dental braces. A business man himself, Zia connected the dots between digital workflow and additive manufacture, and Invisalign was born.

Dr. Chris Hart with his invention — 3D printed intra-oral sleep apnea device

In 2012, an Australian dentist Dr. Chris Hart founded Oventus Ltd., a company focusing on 3D printed mouthpiece to treat sleep apnea, a prevalent condition that often requires cumbersome mask or surgery. Dr. Hart himself also suffers from sleep apnea and basically treated himself with his own invention, which now evolves into an IPO device company ready for the US market.

Founder of Standard Cyborg: Jeff Huber

In 2014, a young engineer founded a software company called Standard Cyborg, focusing on streamlining the digital workflow in the process of making prosthetics. His passion for his company came from his own physical condition: he was born without a fibula in his right leg. Growing up, he had spent countless hours in office visits to have the perfectly fitting prosthetic legs.

Mr. Victor Portes from Silou Elle

In 2016, a fashion designer Victor Portes founded the company Silou Elle. Victor is a very unfortunate gentleman with several female family members afflicted with breast cancer. Given his witness of the painful experiences of the cancer survivors, Victor vows to produce a much better alternative 3D printed breast prosthesis for women treated for breast cancer.

All these founders are all extremely emotionally invested in their products. Their personal experiences with their (or their loved ones’) disease make them more empathetic towards the consumer and more passionate about their products. These traits allow them to sharply focus on problems truly worth solving. Finally, these individuals were also very fortunate to have the knowledge and accessibility to 3D printing and related tools. Without 3D printing, however, their problems will be solved at a much slower pace or impossible to be solved.

Therefore, the most powerful feature of 3D printing is that it empowers patients and healthcare providers to be innovators themselves, by giving them a new tool (like the computers) to be creative in solving problems that are worth solving and problems that are better solved by 3D printing.

And that is when 3D printing will help healthcare with making a quantum leap.

[1] History of 3D printing https://3dprintingindustry.com/3d-printing-basics-free-beginners-guide/history/

[2] Lessons Learned From Using 3D Printed Models to Improve Surgical Planning http://blog.stratasys.com/2016/11/18/surgical-planning-3d-printed-models/

[3] 3D Printing of Medical Devices http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/3DPrintingofMedicalDevices/

[4] FDA Issues Long-Awaited 3D Printing Guidance for Medical Devices — See more at: http://www.raps.org/Regulatory-Focus/News/2016/05/09/24901/FDA-Issues-Long-Awaited-3D-Printing-Guidance-for-Medical-Devices/#sthash.hr99W597.dpuf

[5] Ten Healthcare 3D Printing Events that Defined the Field in 2016 https://3dheals.com/ten-healthcare-3d-printing-events-that-defined-the-field-in-2016/

[6] 13% is a result of a survey of 40 systems manufacturers and 87 service providers globally, based on their revenue, Wohlers Report 2015

The post 3D Printing (and Bioprinting) will help healthcare with a quantum leap? appeared first on 3DHeals.

Q: What is your vision for bioprinting?

A: The applications of bioprinting technology will continue to rapidly advance and will have a major impact on drug development, personalized medicine, and organ transplantation. I imagine a future where life-saving drugs are more efficiently developed without the use of animals, where doctors can determine how a patient will react to a drug before prescribing it, and where replacement organs can be 3D printed using a patient’s own cells, without dealing with wait lists or organ rejection. This is a future that could be enabled by bioprinting technology.

Q: What do you specialize in?

A: Our team at Aspect Biosystems is focused on developing tissues for pre-clinical drug development. An example of this includes a 3D bioprinted tissue that models airway constriction and relaxation. This bioprinted tissue is being used in the development of novel asthma therapeutics. We also focus on developing 3D tissues for clinical applications. A key part of our strategy involves partnering with best-in-class pharma and biotech firms to develop impactful application of our platform technology. An example of this is a collaboration between Aspect and Johnson and Johnson where we are working closely to develop 3D printed knee meniscus tissue for surgical therapy.

Q: What inspires you to do what you do?

A: I am inspired by the amazing potential of bioprinting technology in changing the way we develop drugs and treat disease. I am also inspired by our team at Aspect. Our team of world-class scientists and engineers is constantly pushing the boundaries of our technology with the goal of ultimately making a meaningful impact on patients.

Q: What is the best business lesson you have learned?

A: Starting a business is hard. As Elon Musk says, “starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss”. Having a deep passion and excellent team to get through the difficulties of starting a business is crucial.

Q: How do you ensure you’re making informed decisions?

A: Surrounding myself with smart people I trust, taking their feedback critically, and gathering relevant and current information and data.

Q: How will bioprinting impact pharma R&D?

A: The pre-clinical phase of drug development is in need of increased physiological relevance. Bioprinting will enable us to create tissues that are more predictive of the human response to drugs. Using bioprinted tissues in pre-clinical drug development will allow us to eliminate drugs that won’t work or are unsafe in humans sooner, and take safe and effective drugs into clinical trials with a higher chance of success.

Q: How will bioprinting impact regenerative medicine?

A: Medicine is going to get a lot more personalized, and this is where bioprinting really shines — it’s a customization platform. I imagine in the not so distant future, we will be creating tissues that are customized to your own body, made up of your own cells, to replace diseased tissue.

The post Interview: Mr. Tamer Mohamed appeared first on 3DHeals.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School — Harvard and Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Ali Khademhosseini is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Biomaterials Innovation Research Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also a faculty at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology as well as an Associate Faculty at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and a Junior PI at Japan’s World Premier International-Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University where he directs a satellite laboratory. He is recognized as a leader in combining micro- and nano-engineering approaches with advanced biomaterials for regenerative medicine applications. In particular, his laboratory has pioneered numerous technologies and materials for controlling the architecture and function of engineered vascularized tissues. He has authored over 500 journal papers (H-index = 86, ~29,000 citations) and 50 books/chapters. In addition, he has delivered 300+ invited/keynote lectures.Dr. Khademhosseini’s interdisciplinary research has been recognized by over 40 major national and international awards. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the US government for early career investigators. He is also a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Fellow of the Biomaterials Sciences and Engineering (FBSE) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Currently he serves on the editorial board of numerous leading journals as well as an Associate Editor for ACS Nano (IF: 12) and a permanent member of NIH BTSS study section. He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from MIT (2005), and MASc (2001) and BASc (1999) degrees from University of Toronto both in chemical engineering. Read more at: http://www.tissueeng.net/.

Q: What is your vision on the intersection of 3D Printing and healthcare?

A: I envision that 3D printing can create a wide variety of products with a huge impact on healthcare. Such products, in the form of tissues and organs for tissue regeneration and drug testing will bring a paradigm shift in the fields of personalized prosthetics, implants, and anatomical models.

Q: What do you specialize in? What is your passion?

A: My research is focused on developing micro- and nano scale biomaterials to control cellular behavior with particular emphasis on developing engineered materials and systems for tissue engineering. In particular, I am passionate about developing various approaches to merge micro fabrication techniques such as 3D bioprinting, photo lithography, and microfluidics with hydrogel biomaterials for directing cell organization and generating complex 3D tissues. I am also developing ‘organ-on-a-chip’ systems that aim to mimic human response to various chemicals in vitro. In addition, my laboratory is developing technologies to control the formation of vascularized tissues with appropriate micro architectures as well as regulating stem cell differentiation within micro engineered systems.

Q: What inspired you to do what you do?

A: A passion for science and bringing technologies that make a change for the larger good is what inspired me. I have been lucky to have had my education under the shadows of some great scientists who have brought ground breaking concepts and technologies from bench to bedside that continue to change the lives of millions.

Q: What is the biggest potential impact you see 3D printing having on the healthcare industry?

A: The application of 3D bioprinting technologies in healthcare industry can provide many potential impacts, including: the customization and personalization of medical products, drugs, and equipment, cost-effectiveness, increased productivity, the democratization of design and manufacturing, and enhanced collaboration.

Q: What challenges do you see arising in implementing 3D printing in healthcare sector in the next 5 years?

A: A major challenge in making large tissues is vascularization. The pace at which the 3D bioprinting technology is developing, I see it is not a distant dream to achieve.

Q: What is the best business lesson you have learned?

A: I have learned that to enable biofabricated products, a synergy of multidisciplinary scientific fields such as mechanics, computer science, biomaterials, biology, tissue engineering, etc. is required for a successful translation. There is always a market for technologies that are disruptive in their approach to address a particular health problem.

Q: What is the biggest business risk you have taken?

A: It was to accept a job offer at Harvard Medical School as it is a very challenging environment.

[et_pb_image src=”” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” align=”left” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on”][/et_pb_image]

The post Interview: Prof. Ali Khademhosseini appeared first on 3DHeals.