A couple of Saturdays ago, we held what we call BioPrinting Breakout, an event where we attempt to open up 3-D tissue engineering to new audiences and applications. Hopefully tissue engineering can be used for all kinds of things besides medicine, perhaps becoming part of the toolbox of the popular makers. Presentations were from
Jon Rowley, RoosterBio who is trying to scale human bone marrow and adipose mesenchymal stem cells for pricing and availability at levels attractive to the maker community,
Sebastian Cocioba, plant cell and tissue expert, frequent contributor to DIYbio
Axel Guenther, U Toronto, Dyson Prize winner, who has developed a way to make large-scaled microfluidic sheets for use as skin
David Kolesky, Lewis Research Group, Harvard U who carefully 3-D prints vascularized tissue
Ritu Raman, Bashir Research Group, U Illinois who builds 3-D printed muscle powered robots
Ryan Hoover, BUGSS/MICA who is developing artwork based on 3-D printed biologics. He also had to present at the last minute for
Anderson Ta who fell ill. Anderson works in the Miller Group at RIce University, a place that is trying to shake up the medical world with innovative 3-D print hackers.
There were also demonstrations and workshops of cell culturing, algenate dispensation by
Lye Lock, RoosterBio, and Lye Lin of Johns Hopkins U, 3-d printers in action from
BioBots,and
jimmi research and lower cost fluorescent microscopy from Thermo Scientific. We did not take video of this.
This will be happening again, and we'll be asking for participants/ submissions (or whatever) about the October time frame. We'll also be posting developments in 3D bioprinting efforts at
3dbiofab.com.