BIOLIFE4D -3D Bioprinting Process
For years scientists and engineers have been using 3D printers to create objects out of metals and plastics. The 3D printing industry has become so big, in fact, that over the next few years its projected worth is expected to top $30 billion.
To the layman, “3D bioprinting” may be a strange term that conjures up futuristic images of science fiction.
But the fascinating reality is that 3D bioprinting is indeed science fact, and it’s built on a history of advancements across a number of life science and technological disciplines.
There’s the biological aspect, which dates back to 1839 and the discovery that cells are the building blocks of life. In the 1970’s stem cells were discovered, and then in 2006, Japanese Nobel Prize-winning stem cell researcher Dr. Shinya Yamanaka learned that mature cells – safely gathered through cultures or samples – could be reprogrammed back into a stem cell state. This was a foundational breakthrough for regenerative medicine and today’s 3D bioprinting capability.
There’s also the technological side of 3D bioprinting, which traces the history of computing power from the first devices of the 1930’s to the quantum computers appearing over just the last few years. Even today’s smartphones have many times more power than the Apollo Guidance Computer used to manage rockets in the 1960’s. It’s this kind of exponential progress in computing processing power, coupled with advancements in software design, that enable 3D bioprinters to perform the intricate, exceptionally precise motions required to print biological tissue.
This brings us to the printing hardware itself.
We’ve come a long way from the noisy dot matrix printers we used to have in our homes and offices – technology that actually dates back to the 1920’s. Three-dimensional printers capable of “printing” tangible objects from digital data began with an invention from Charles Hull in 1984. Since then, engineers and hobbyists and used 3D printers to create all manner of objects – even buildings.
3D printing appeared on the medical scene in 2000, first used as a way to create implants and prosthetics that closely matched a given patient’s physical characteristics. Along with anatomical modeling, those kinds of non-biological uses continue today in the medical field.
But it wasn’t until 2003 that Thomas Boland created the world’s first 3D bioprinter, capable of printing living tissue from a “bioink” of cells, nutrients and other bio-compatible substances.
Two other key breakthroughs would soon follow Boland’s 2003 invention. In 2006, the first lab-grown human bladder would be successfully implanted. And in 2009, the first blood vessels would be 3D bioprinted.
Enter BIOLIFE4D, with its quest to print not just tissues, but actual organs.
Today, BIOLIFE4D stands ready to capitalize on these major developments in regenerative medicine, adult stem cell biology, 3D printing techniques and computing technology. For BIOLIFE4D, it’s not about additional new invention – it’s about optimizing the processes around the amazing things that have already been invented.
Less than a decade ago, we could not have imagined the medical capability we now have in hand. BIOLIFE4D’s laser focus is on putting that capability to work for the betterment of mankind.
BIOLIFE4D’s mission is to create patient-specific, fully functioning hearts through 3D bioprinting using the patient’s own cells. It needs some help to get there, and with an equity crowdfunding raise in the works, most anyone can participate with a relatively small investment.
It starts with a patient’s own cells and ends with a 3D bioprinted heart that’s a precise fit and genetic match.
- THE IMAGE : The BIOLIFE4D bioprinted organ replacement process begins with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedure used to create a detailed three-dimensional image of a patient’s heart. Using this image, a computer software program will construct a digital model of a new heart for the patient, matching the shape and size of the original.
- THE INK : A “bio-ink” is created using the specialized heart cells combined with nutrients and other materials that will help the cells survive the bioprinting process.
- THE CELLS : Hearts created through the BIOLIFE4D bioprinting process start with a patient’s own cells. Doctors safely take cells from the patient via a blood sample, and leveraging recent stem cell research breakthroughs, BIOLIFE4D plans to reprogram those blood cells and convert them to create specialized heart cells.
- THE BIOPRINTING : Bioprinting is done with a 3D bioprinter that is fed the dimensions obtained from the MRI. After printing, the heart is then matured in a bioreactor, conditioned to make it stronger and readied for patient transplant.
- A MRI scan would be performed and a blood sample collected from the patient.
- Because every cell in a human body has the same number of genes and the same DNA, every cell has the potential to be converted to essentially any other cell. In the second step of the process, the blood cells from the sample would be converted to unspecialized adult induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) – cells that can ultimately be changed back into specialized cells of our choice.
- Through a process called differentiation, iPS cells would be converted to almost any type of specialized cell in the human body, in this case cardiomyocytes (heart cells).
- These cells would then be combined with nutrients and other necessary factors in a liquid environment (hydrogel) to keep the cells alive and viable throughout the process. This bio-ink of living cells would be sustained in this aqueous 3D environment.
- The bio-ink would then be loaded into a bioprinter, a highly specialized 3D printer designed to protect the viable living cells during the printing process.
- An appropriately sized heart would then be printed one layer at a time, guided by computer software following the specific dimensions obtained from the MRI. Since the heart cells would not be fused together at this point, a biocompatible and biodegradable scaffolding would be included with each layer to support the cells and hold them in place.
- When the process is complete, the heart would be moved to a bioreactor which would mimic the nutrient and oxygen-rich conditions inside a human body.
- The individual cells would begin self-organizing and fusing into networks which would connect to form living tissue. The cells would even begin to beat in unison.
- Once the process is far enough along, the scaffolding would be dissolved leaving only the fully formed heart which will remain in the bioreactor until it reaches a desired level of strength and maturity.
- A successful patient transplant would then be possible and carried out by a transplant surgeon. Given the original MRI and blood sample, the new heart should be both a precise fit and a perfect genetic match for the patient – free from the risk of rejection or the need for immunosuppressant therapy that has plagued conventional organ transplant methods.
But what if we could print a human organ, ultimately even a human heart? Science has found a way. This is not science fiction. This is science fact. And it’s all done through a process called bioprinting.
By definition, 3D bioprinting is the process of creating cell patterns in a confined space using 3D printing technologies, thereby preserving cell function and viability within the printed construct. In other words, a 3D bioprinter is a highly specialized 3D printer designed to protect living cells during the printing process. Bioprinters are now capable of creating functional biological structures with the potential to one day restore, maintain, improve, and/or replace existing organ function.
Today, advancements in regenerative medicine, adult stem cell biology, additive manufacturing (3D printing) and computing technology have enabled bioprinting to produce human body parts including multilayered skin, bone, vascular grafts, tracheal splints, heart tissue and cartilaginous structures – and even organs.
Everything in the human body is made up of cells, and nature itself has been evolving the capability of programming cells to do specific jobs for millions of years. The human embryo is the best example of this biological manufacturing process. Every cell begins as a stem cell and then is biologically programmed to do a specific job through the natural biologic process inside the body.
Enter BIOLIFE4D
During the 3D bioprinting process, BIOLIFE4D plans to replicate the same conditions in vitro (outside of the body) as occur naturally in vivo (within the body) while promoting natural biologic processes in an accelerated timeframe and in a manner that allows the cells to be specialized for a desired purpose.
Transformative Benefits of BIOLIFE4D’s 3D Bioprinting Process
Delivering potentially transformative medical benefits, the 3D bioprinting process optimized by BIOLIFE4D could:
- Eliminate the rejection of transplanted organs by utilizing a patient’s own cells to produce an organ
- Eradicate immunosuppressant therapy requirement (and bad side effects) for the patient
- Provide functionality with capabilities very similar to those in the original organ
- Decrease waiting time of patients for donated organs
- Minimize need for organ donors
- Increase patient longevity without compromising quality of life
- Allow for patient-specific pharmaceutical testing
- Substantially reduce the reliance on animal testing for pharmaceutical research and development, and in other industries such as cosmetics