[MUSIC] Bioprinting is a mechanism which includes software and hardware for the design of living tissue and organs. The field originated about 15 years back, but significant advances over the past few years have got us to a stage where artificial tissue is being used widely for research and development. For drug development and some early experiments in organ development are also showing promise. There are about a dozen forms in this space, but it still early days. Gartner Research Firm predicts that we are about five to ten years away from maturity of this field, which quite frankly, is not to far out. The scale of some of the tissue that people are able to create and use, and this is available commercially as well, is still very small. And as we look at 3D printing organs, one of the biggest obstacles researchers face is to overcome the challenge of figuring out creating 3D printed blood vessels. So let's find out more from Dr. Shokuhfar about advances in bioprinting and her own work in the area. >> My name is Tolou Shokufar. I'm associate professor of bioengineering at The University of Illinois in Chicago. I have two major research areas as a focus of my research lab, which is in-situ bioelectro microscopy of biological tissues and proteins for diagnostics of disease as well as nanomaterials and biomaterials for regenerative medicine. As a main focus of my bionanomaterial research in nanomedicine, I also work with 3D bioprinting for regenerative medicine. Can you possibly make something living? So that is the idea. Can we bring the idea of 3D printing into 3D bioprinting? So, what bioprinting is, in simple words, we can say how about we try to construct something that is used in the body, in a living system. With this, we can even categorize the 3D bioprinting systems. Either we can 3D bioprint a scaffold, and then use that to replicate or replace parts of the body that is un-functional. Or we can actually print living cells and then use that to actually replace an organ that is not functional. Well, I have to add that the second part of it is way down the road and is the future idea of 3D bioprinting that everybody is hoping to achieve. Going back again to 3D printing of scaffolds, where you do not have any cells, that is actually a more approachable application of 3D bioprinting right now. Because you don't have to worry about keeping the cells alive, keeping them functional, providing the environment for them to basically replicate what they have to do. Rather than that, you can actually print a part of the body that is missing. For example, scaffolds for bone, those could be a good examples. You can actually use these 3D bioprinter products to better mimic the properties and the shape of the implant. You can even take CT scan of a skull, and if there is a case of accident from maxillofacial injuries, so you can make a 3D scan of the missing part. And you can really replicate, with all the detail, missing part, the construct from a biologically compatible biomaterial. And that could be replaced for the missing part. And the human cells by themselves, the tissue by themselves can encounter the whole scaffold and try to regenerate and mimic the construct. So as a summary, I would like to say that 3D bioprinting is a next generation, which we all look forward to it. It has two concepts behind it. One either you can print biomaterials that could be used and implanted within the body. Or you can actually print cells which the mimic extracellular environment, that could actually mimic an organic or a tissue in the body. My research, for now we are focusing on two aspects. We are working on developing certain type of scaffolds. And with the specific bio-ink, development of that specific bio-ink that can help the regeneration of nervous system. So we are incorporating and developing our actual matrix, which would be also in hydrogel-based matrix. We're incorporating some components which are compatible. If you think of a bio-ink as a nanocomp or a composite material, we have that hydrogel base. We have other components that can provide electrical conductivity, they could be graphene based, which we're incorporating them as well, as well as stem cells. And an additional to that, we change out the stem cells and some other cases, different bio-inks, to astrocyte cells. And then we can apply electrical impulses to help and assimilate the regeneration of astrocytes, then to have a proper external regeneration. We are also starting to work with the GI system. That could be essential, and very important for toxicology studies. So we're missing, right now, a lot of drug development. Drug discovery is a billion dollar industry right now. It’s suffering through really coming up with a good method to do discoveries of the drug. Right now, I would say, well, they have to go through animal studies, and then clinical trials. In many of the cases, the drug actually would fail in the case with the animal studies and would not even get approval for further studies. And there are a lot of costs and other ethical issues related to that. As the last example of what we do in the lab, we are working with manufacturing 3D printed scaffolds that could be used for lower jaw or maxillofacial reconstruction. That is extremely valuable for the cases of traumatic injuries. In this case, we are not bioprinting any cells. Rather, we print an environment consisting of hydroxyapatite bone forming environment that can replicate those missing part. The future of bioprinting, and the main, whole, beautiful idea is to maybe at some point we can save lives. And really print organs that are not functional at this point, helping people that need, today, donors of organs. But that's a beautiful future which I see for it. So today, it has been possible, for example, to 3D bioprint a kidney or a liver. You look at it it, it actually does look like or feel like coming from a cadaver, a patient recently passed away. But it is not really functional, is not really working as it’s supposed to. But that's the future, so to really take it to the next level, overcome the barriers. Overcome the milestones right now, and hopefully, make that bioprinted tissue or organ a functional organ. For a future application, I would like to mention drug screening would be amazing if it's possible to get to that point where we really don't need to go through all the required steps that may even fail in some [INAUDIBLE]. We can have even the organ on a chip, or a natural organ that we can use for drug testing and drug screening. We don't need to go through a lot of animal studies, from small scale, all the way to big animal studies. We then can avoid a lot of unnecessarily required human trials. There is a lot that I believe 3D bioprinting can offer us, and there is a lot that could be done in future. And I personally believe that something that might be coming from a Star Trek or science fiction is no science fiction anymore. Right now, it's just human creativity and how much we are willing and wanting to make that happen. As long as we desire and as long as dream, I believe that's possible. [MUSIC]
