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New Organs at the Push of a Button

Breakthrough:
Organovo is a regenerative medicine company developing the NovoGen bioprinting technology that is capable of producing basic biological tissues such as blood vessels, and ultimately heart cells and kidney cells. Although the ability to print and produce entire organs for transplant patients is some way off scientists and engineers will be able to build tissues cell-by-cell using a 3-D bioprinter that incorporates NovoGen.

Business:
Organovo, Inc.

The Story:

Advantages

The idea is for surgeons to have tissues on demand for a number of uses. Scientists will be able to place almost every kind of cell into a specific pattern in 3-D by using pre-formed scaffolds. The major advantages for patients according to Organovo is that printing blood vessels from a patient’s own cells will allow transplant surgery to work better, and as the cells are autologous there should be less rejection by a patient’s body.
The instrument houses an intuitive piece of software so that tissue engineers can create a model of the tissue construct before the cells are printed. Then the laser guidance system on the device goes to work and places cells with micron precision. There are two print heads; one for human cells and the other for creating the scaffold.

Revolution in Regenerative Medicine

To help them develop their device Organovo worked with Invetech, an innovative product development company with a history of robotics, manufacturing products and precision design. “Through this clever combination of technology and science we have helped Organovo develop an instrument that will improve people’s lives, making the regenerative medicine that Organovo provides accessible to people around the world,” said Dr. Fred Davis, president of Invetech.

Commercial versions of the 3-D bioprinters will be available to research and medical institutions throughout 2010 and 2011.

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