about bio-3d-printing

[joachim]

every few months there's another achievement in bio-3d-printing, like this one, printing blood vessels which is a difficult task even for 3d printers:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140530190554.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

with the hydrogel support material there's almost any structure possible you can imagine. the mechanical accuracy and resolution is no problem at all, as it can always be adjusted with gear ratio, sensor feedbacks etc.

the only question is how precisely the nozzle is able to release the different cells (how many cells per drop?). i think if per drop some hundred cells would be released, his would probably be totally enough for hair follicle printing (with dp cells, dermal sheath cup cells and epithelial cells).

however, Dr. Gardner mentioned that the technology is not there yet but i just can't see why.
i say, the technology is here already! maybe not as a big commercial products which are sold in thousands, but still fully functional devices which could be used for a proof-of-concept. i also saw on the Organovo website for example that they offer partner programs to use their printer for such stuff. beside organovo there are other bio-printing companies, too.

i can't wait another 5 years 'til someone of the researchers gets the idea to try it out. let's be proactive and contact some of the 3d bioprinting companies to find out more. i'm going to contact organovo tomorrow to see what they have.

from what we heard so far is the exact follicle 3d structure the key for the cells to retain their gene expression and inductivity. i can't see a better way than the 3d printer.

i'm tired of the waiting game.

any other thoughts on this?

[nameless]

every few months there's another achievement in bio-3d-printing, like this one, printing blood vessels which is a difficult task even for 3d printers:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140530190554.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

with the hydrogel support material there's almost any structure possible you can imagine. the mechanical accuracy and resolution is no problem at all, as it can always be adjusted with gear ratio, sensor feedbacks etc.

the only question is how precisely the nozzle is able to release the different cells (how many cells per drop?). i think if per drop some hundred cells would be released, his would probably be totally enough for hair follicle printing (with dp cells, dermal sheath cup cells and epithelial cells).

however, Dr. Gardner mentioned that the technology is not there yet but i just can't see why.
i say, the technology is here already! maybe not as a big commercial products which are sold in thousands, but still fully functional devices which could be used for a proof-of-concept. i also saw on the Organovo website for example that they offer partner programs to use their printer for such stuff. beside organovo there are other bio-printing companies, too.

i can't wait another 5 years 'til someone of the researchers gets the idea to try it out. let's be proactive and contact some of the 3d bioprinting companies to find out more. i'm going to contact organovo tomorrow to see what they have.

from what we heard so far is the exact follicle 3d structure the key for the cells to retain their gene expression and inductivity. i can't see a better way than the 3d printer.

i'm tired of the waiting game.

any other thoughts on this?

I've been looking at these bio-printers for awhile and wondering why they can't just bio-print follicles. I think that you're right.

[joachim]

by the way i think this could be a cool project for our community. if we could find a researcher who is willing to give this proof of concept a try, we could crowdfund that experiment. i think something like 30k to 50k (peanuts) should be enough to pay the researcher for 1 to 2 months (isolating and expanding cells in dishes) and also to pay the bioprinting technology to use their printer technology for some days.
or this is a crazy idea?

[sdsurfin]

I agree that this is a good crowd funding project. Might be a good way to make a difference and work with some people that are willing to go out on a limb. I think if enough money was raised, even someone on a team like lauster's would be willing to go down this path. I don't think the technology is lacking either, and most researchers want to keep going down their respective paths because that is what they have perfected. I think this represents the future of organ regeneration, and as a technology project, could be easier to crowdfund and easier to garner interest from a wide range of people.

We might be able to get someone like Dr. Xu or Dr. Gardner on board as a paid consultant to work with someone who is more involved with the 3D printing aspect.

[nameless]

I agree that this is a good crowd funding project. Might be a good way to make a difference and work with some people that are willing to go out on a limb. I think if enough money was raised, even someone on a team like lauster's would be willing to go down this path. I don't think the technology is lacking either, and most researchers want to keep going down their respective paths because that is what they have perfected. I think this represents the future of organ regeneration, and as a technology project, could be easier to crowdfund and easier to garner interest from a wide range of people.

We might be able to get someone like Dr. Xu or Dr. Gardner on board as a paid consultant to work with someone who is more involved with the 3D printing aspect.

Please!

We should not take Dr. Gardner or Lauster away from the work they are doing. If we are going to try to do a crowdfunded study involving a 3d printer we should stick with what the poster who first came up with the idea said and pay the people who are already involved with 3d printers to give it a go.

Every time someone comes up with a good idea other people have to add bad ideas to it. sdsurfin, just leave the idea as it originally started out because it's a good idea for 4 reasons:

1. The people who know 3d printers the best are the people already working with 3d printers.

2. The people who work with 3d printers are already set up to try the experiment.

3. Scientists are intellectual resources. If you get someone like Gardner or Lauster to try this 3d printing idea that means you will be pulling them away from the hair growth work that they're already doing. It's best to treat the 3d printer idea as a separate avenue of research and move forward with it ourselves (hiring a 3d printer company to try it) rather than trying to take scientists away from their own projects that might work, and might work faster.

4. Lauster and Gardner already have their ongoing research projects. It really seems sophmoric to contact these two scientists and ask them to drop what they're doing so they can try something else that we thought of instead.

[Armandein]

hopefully to a positive response Organovo

[joachim]

Please!

We should not take Dr. Gardner or Lauster away from the work they are doing. If we are going to try to do a crowdfunded study involving a 3d printer we should stick with what the poster who first came up with the idea said and pay the people who are already involved with 3d printers to give it a go.

Every time someone comes up with a good idea other people have to add bad ideas to it. sdsurfin, just leave the idea as it originally started out because it's a good idea for 4 reasons:

1. The people who know 3d printers the best are the people already working with 3d printers.

2. The people who work with 3d printers are already set up to try the experiment.

3. Scientists are intellectual resources. If you get someone like Gardner or Lauster to try this 3d printing idea that means you will be pulling them away from the hair growth work that they're already doing. It's best to treat the 3d printer idea as a separate avenue of research and move forward with it ourselves (hiring a 3d printer company to try it) rather than trying to take scientists away from their own projects that might work, and might work faster.

4. Lauster and Gardner already have their ongoing research projects. It really seems sophmoric to contact these two scientists and ask them to drop what they're doing so they can try something else that we thought of instead.

i think you're overacting a bit. of course we won't stop or delay other researchers' current attempts. nobody of them would be willing to take such a course.
but on the other side it's obvious that we need one of the researchers to do cell isolation/expansion in dishes, and also to check the 3d printed follicles properties (inductivity and gene expression). best case scenario i could imagine is that the assembled follicle creates a hair shaft in vitro after some days, like those from lauster's bioreactor.
the question is also how to treat the printed follicle. has it to be moved into another culture dish, or any other special requirements? for all this tasks we need an experienced researcher and i can only imagine that many reseachers would be interested to give this method a try as it doesn't require much preparation and studies. the most important thing is the right 3D model of a follicle. designing and preparing it for the printer is no big deal at all, but it's important to know the typical dimensions of the different parts, e.g. the dermal papilla should be a ball (or maybe a drop-like structure) with a diameter of 70 microns. DP should be surrounded by the dermal sheath cells, with xy micron thickness, and then all should be coated with epithelial cells. when the right model is created, then just let the printer do its job. we could even try slightly different model approaches if we (and researchers) are not 100% sure about all dimensions. but i think, after all this years of research, there should be a relatively accurate model available.

the best would be to create the follicle with fresh isolated (not multiplied) cells, just to see if this works and creates a hair shaft. this would be the first milestone. if this works, then the next step is to do it with isolated and multiplied cells to see if inductivity and gene expression could be retained.

so the most important thing is to first find out how far the bio printing companies are (accuracy, preparation of cell-inks, hydrogel support material capabilities and so on).
if one of those companies think their technology is able to do it, then the next step would be to talk to a researcher, to spend 2 or 3 months on it (maybe parallel to his actual work). although it's not that easy as it may sound, i think it's relatively easy compared to manual culturing, trying new techniques and so on. the potential of a 3D printer is HUGE! even dr. gardner said that. however, he still thinks the technology is not ready yet. maybe he's right, but maybe the situation changed in the last 1 or 2 years. i'm going to find that out.
i would love if we could get a knowledgeable reseacher like him and even jahoda on board, just to give this method a try. but even if they don't like to do it, we could find other researchers like Dr. Xu or so.
i just would have a good feeling with Dr. gardner especially as i see he's a passionate researcher, taking the time to answer questions to us newbies and is eager to bring his work forward.

worst case: we find out that 3D printing doesn't lead to functional follicles and we can close this chapter. but i still don't see why this shouldn't work as all the other culturing techniques also show some results. and all the researchers try to mimic the natural follicle structure as good as they can with their 3d culturing methods.

[joachim]

would also be interesting if fat cells could be expanded in a dish. then we could use them to coat the whole follicle with the 3d printer, too.

man, if we can assemble a 3d printed follicle with all those different cells (DP, DSC, epithelial, and even fat cells) then there's simply NO WAY why the cells shouldn't form the perfect follicle. if all the current culturing techniques showed some results already, then 3D printing is just the optimum you could achieve. it's fact. no time to waste... we need to get our hands on this stuff NOW.

[joachim]

some stuff to read:

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/3d-bioprinting-10-things-you-should-know-about-how-it-works/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10629531/The-next-step-3D-printing-the-human-body.html

[hellouser]

would also be interesting if fat cells could be expanded in a dish. then we could use them to coat the whole follicle with the 3d printer, too.

man, if we can assemble a 3d printed follicle with all those different cells (DP, DSC, epithelial, and even fat cells) then there's simply NO WAY why the cells shouldn't form the perfect follicle. if all the current culturing techniques showed some results already, then 3D printing is just the optimum you could achieve. it's fact. no time to waste... we need to get our hands on this stuff NOW.

But do we really need to do that? Why couldn't fat grafting be an option?

[joachim]

But do we really need to do that? Why couldn't fat grafting be an option?

we don't need to do it. but if turns out that this could be easily done (just multiplying cells like with the other cell types), it would be the better way because the fat cells are directly surrounding the follicles then. no shooting in the dark by just injecting fat cells randomly.

i don't know. maybe it turns out that fat cells aren't suited anyway. was just an idea, to mimic an even more perfect follicle. i can also imagine that it could have an advantage when the follicle gets implanted into the scalp.

[artika]

Any news from Organovo?

[joachim]

received an answer... but not very satisfying.

They are actually focusing on different tissue models and partnering with some other labs and researchers for this purpose. Hair follicle models are not yet planned, and prioritiy is on the other tissue models for now. However, the situation may look different in 1 to 2 years, if they get a request from a researcher team to try out some stuff.

However, that doesn't bother me.
Altough Organovo is on a good way and I don't want downplay their work I have the impression they are still a young startup and only in the beginning of the whole bio-printing era.

There are probably a lot other labs and researchers working on similar bio-3D printing experiments and it will be more and more with every year. Personally I even think what they are doing is nothing special at all.
The key here is to have a prezise nozzle and chambers (cartridges) with the cells in it, and also the Hydrogel support material which seems to be a pretty common substance used by a lot of bio scientists. It's basically some water/sugar based gel.

What I'm trying next is to contact some of the big players in 3D printers which are in the game for 10 years and longer. As I'm also working a lot with professional 3D printers I have some contacts here.

3D printing technology is relatively easy and well evolved today, and precision is no problem at all with actual electronics/mechanics.

the only key here is to prepare the so-called bio-ink which is nothing more than the cells in some kind of liquid (probably the same liquid researchers are using in the petri dish to culture cells).

I'm going to talk to some of those companies if there is any interest to build a simple functional prototype for that purpose (basically just modifying an exisiting printer to enable the injection of those bio-fluids).

I think there is a good chance that one of those companies shows some interest and I even think some of them are working on something behind the scenes already, which I will find out then hopefully.
For example the company "3D Systems", which is beside "Stratasys" the biggest player on the market, they always seem to be open to new business fields. They have 3D printers for plastics, metal, ceramics (really cool!), and even bought a startup recently to get their chocolate/candy printing technology. Thus, a medical business field seems not so far-fetched and would be a logical step for those tech-giants.

Will keep you updated.

[nameless]

received an answer... but not very satisfying.

They are actually focusing on different tissue models and partnering with some other labs and researchers for this purpose. Hair follicle models are not yet planned, and prioritiy is on the other tissue models for now. However, the situation may look different in 1 to 2 years, if they get a request from a researcher team to try out some stuff.

However, that doesn't bother me.
Altough Organovo is on a good way and I don't want downplay their work I have the impression they are still a young startup and only in the beginning of the whole bio-printing era.

There are probably a lot other labs and researchers working on similar bio-3D printing experiments and it will be more and more with every year. Personally I even think what they are doing is nothing special at all.
The key here is to have a prezise nozzle and chambers (cartridges) with the cells in it, and also the Hydrogel support material which seems to be a pretty common substance used by a lot of bio scientists. It's basically some water/sugar based gel.

What I'm trying next is to contact some of the big players in 3D printers which are in the game for 10 years and longer. As I'm also working a lot with professional 3D printers I have some contacts here.

3D printing technology is relatively easy and well evolved today, and precision is no problem at all with actual electronics/mechanics.

the only key here is to prepare the so-called bio-ink which is nothing more than the cells in some kind of liquid (probably the same liquid researchers are using in the petri dish to culture cells).

I'm going to talk to some of those companies if there is any interest to build a simple functional prototype for that purpose (basically just modifying an exisiting printer to enable the injection of those bio-fluids).

I think there is a good chance that one of those companies shows some interest and I even think some of them are working on something behind the scenes already, which I will find out then hopefully.
For example the company "3D Systems", which is beside "Stratasys" the biggest player on the market, they always seem to be open to new business fields. They have 3D printers for plastics, metal, ceramics (really cool!), and even bought a startup recently to get their chocolate/candy printing technology. Thus, a medical business field seems not so far-fetched and would be a logical step for those tech-giants.

Will keep you updated.

Keep in mind that if they say they're too busy we could then look at the possibility of paying them to do it.

And I do think that fat cells are important to make correct follicles.

[joachim]

another great step towards bio-printed organs:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140630103136.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

i'm almost sure fully functional printed organs like liver, kidney and lung will be a reality within 10 to 20 years. i hope that applies to hair follicles as well.

however, i'm still trying to get the right contacts for the printed follicle experiment. will probably take some more weeks... i'll keep you updated.