bioprinting – Impact Lab

3D Printer, Coronavirus, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

3D-printed pharmaceuticals pave the way for customizable drug therapies

November 1, 2020

Personalized pills created by 3D printers will help treat complex diseases cheaply.

Since its inception during the later decades of the last century, 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing) has moved far beyond merely fabricating simple plastic parts. Today the technique can be used to produce much-needed medical supplies such as personal protective equipment for health care workers fighting COVID-19. Among other advances, 3D printing is now also considered a serious tool to advance medicine and pharmacology through bioprinting. Bioprinting can create anatomical models of patients prior to surgery and some biological tissues, with the goal of progressing to printing whole complex organs such as the heart. However, another emerging and potentially revolutionary use for 3D bioprinting is the production of pharmaceutical drugs that are tailored to meet the needs of specific patients.

In 2015 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first 3D-printed pharmaceutical, SPRITAM (levetiracetam), created by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals for the treatment of seizures. Although the drug remains the only 3D-printed drug currently approved by the FDA, the many advantages of 3D-printed drugs place them at the forefront of what’s ahead for medicine as the FDA works on formulating a regulatory framework for them.

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3D Printer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Cryogenic 3Dprinting improves bioprinting for bone regeneration

September 19, 2020

Researchers from China continue in the quest to improve methods for bone regeneration, publishing their findings in “Cryogenic 3D printing of dual-delivery scaffolds for improved bone regeneration with enhanced vascularization.”

A wide range of projects have emerged regarding new techniques for bone regeneration—especially in the last five years as 3D printing has become more entrenched in the mainstream and bioprinting has continued to evolve. Bone regeneration is consistently challenging, and while bioprinting is still relatively new as a field, much impressive progress has been made due to experimentation with new materials, nanotubes, and innovative structures.

Cell viability is usually the biggest problem. Tissue engineering, while becoming much more successful these days, is still an extremely delicate process as cells must not only be grown but sustained in the lab too. For this reason, scientists are always working to improve structures like scaffolds, as they are responsible in most cases for supporting the cells being printed. In this study, the authors emphasize the need for both “excellent osteogenesis and vascularization” in bone regeneration.

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3D Printer, Food, Science & Technology News, Space Flight

International Space Station crew 3D-prints meat in space for the first time!

October 18, 2019

For the first time in the history of space, meat was ‘created’ on the International Space Station (ISS) and no animals were harmed in the making of this 3D bio-printed ‘space beef.’ On October 7, Aleph Farms, an Israeli food company, announced that its experiment aboard the space lab resulted in the first lab-grown meat in space.

Albeit climate change was the main motivation for the company to produce slaughter-free meat, it seems like a breakthrough for space as an entire piece of real, edible meat was grown out of just a couple of cells in a lab- Bovine cell spheroids to be precise.

The experiment was carried out by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka in the space lab’s Russian segment using a 3D printer developed in Moscow. It involved growing meat by mimicking a cow’s natural muscle-tissue regeneration process. Aleph Farms collaborated with the Russian company 3D Bioprinting Solutions and two U.S.-based food companies to test this method in space.

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3D Printer, Biotech, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

New video shows 3D printed lung “breathing”

May 16, 2019

First Breaths

Scientists just took a major step forward towards 3D printed organs — with a new lung-like system full of air sacs can expand and contract, filling the same biological role as our lungs do by pumping oxygen into blood.

Bioprinted organs could someday help people who are waiting and sometimes dying on the organ transplant waitlist. In research published in the journal Science last week, the team behind the new printing technique made a similar device and successfully grafted it into mice with injured livers.

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3D Printer, Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, Medical Breakthrough

Bioprinting: How 3d printing is changing medicine

November 24, 2018

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3D Printer, Biotech, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists can 3D print human heart tissue now. The future is here

July 10, 2018

Long term, the goal of 3D bioprinting is to be able to 3D print fully functioning organs which can be used to replace the failing biological organs of humans in need of a transplant. That may still be years off, but Chicago-based biotech startup Biolife4D this week announced a major new milestone: Its ability to bioprint human cardiac tissue.

The scientific landmark followed shortly after the company opened a new research facility in Houston. It involved the printing of a human cardiac patch, containing multiple cell types which make up the human heart. It could one day be used to help treat patients who have suffered acute heart failure in order to restore lost myocardial contractility, the ability of the heart to generate force for pumping blood around the body.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

What Is Bioprinting?

May 11, 2018

Bioprinted materials can be used to repair damaged organs.

Bioprinting, a type of 3D printing, uses cells and other biological materials as “inks” to fabricate 3D biological structures. Bioprinted materials have the potential to repair damaged organs, cells, and tissues in the human body. In the future, bioprinting may be used to build entire organs from scratch, a possibility that could transform the field of bioprinting.

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3D Printer, Analysis, Animals, Breakthrough Thinking, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

3D printed thyroid gland implanted into mice

November 5, 2015

With new advancements happening on a regular basis in the world of bioprinting, it’s hard to determine just which company is furthest ahead. Is it Organovo, the publicly traded company already working to create 3D printed mini kidneys with Australian researchers? Or is it one of the many research institutions making advancements in 3D printing ear drums, blood vessels, or carbon composites for bone regeneration? If one had to choose, they might lean towards 3D Bioprinting Solutions, who successfully 3D printed a thyroid gland, classified as an “organ construct”. And, today, news leaked that the Russian company had taken their research one step further, implanting a 3D printed thyroid into mice.

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