The process of 3D bioprinting—producing human tissue using inks composed of living cells—has moved from the University laboratory to the corporate board room. According to Arundhati Pamar, writing for Med City News, Organovo Holdings, Inc., a San Diego based company, is commercializing the process.
“What we know from cell biology is that if you take the right cells and create these architectures of various cells and tissue types, you can precipitate or catalyze or induce, if you will, the formation of a tissue, ” said Michael Renard, Executive Vice President of Commercial Operations at Organovo. The uniqueness of what we do is not just the cells and managing cells and growing the cells. It’s using the bioprinting to create a defined architecture that, in turn, creates a tissue.” Pamar explained that the company’s expertise is in choosing the right kind of cells and using the bioprinters to give these cells a predefined structure,
Renard reports that drug companies are interested in the possibility of testing their drugs on functional human tissue spun out by Organovo’s NovoGen bioprinters. “What doesn’t exist today is a three dimensional piece of living human tissue that has the right cell types so that you can gauge it in some sort of testing or study, ” he said. “You get an in vivo-like response that you can rely on, and trust that it’s predictable of what would happen in the body.”
Renard says Organovo also envisions creating a line of functional tissues and selling them. “I can tell you that we are progressing in active research in the areas of liver, blood vessel, bone and cartilage, cardiac and kidney. We are determining which ones to bring to market and in what order, ” he said.
The company is presently supported by grants. The National Institutes of Health has provided a $290, 053 grant to produce 3D, bioprinted, functional, human liver tissue in the third quarter. Company officials say that the growing of full organs is still years away.
