3D Tissue Engineering….Closer Than We Think

We recently posted a video on our site of an ear being printed with a 3D printer and while there is great “wow factor” in watching it form through the injection process, the reality is we are a very long way off from being able to print body parts and organs that can be attached or implanted.  That said, Molecular Matrix, a Biotech start up in Davis, CA has developed an inexpensive scaffold that can allow cells to grow naturally in a three dimensional environment (pictured here).

Their matrix is a special polysaccharide (which is essentially sugar molecules bonded together) that provides the perfect micro-environment for cell growth and development.  It is done so in a very unique way that allows almost any cell to grow in a 3D environment which more accurately represents the conditions of the human body.

The legacy of the two-dimensional cell culture method was first developed in 1885 and became routine in the 1940s and 1950s.  Approximately 130 years after the initial discovery, an overwhelming number of researchers in academic institutes and pharmaceutical companies still rely exclusively on two-dimensional cell cultures.

The main problem with this is that cells cultured on a two-dimensional surface, typically a plastic petri dish, do not sufficiently represent complex three-dimensional organ systems.  This new scaffold called “GroCell-3D^TM” supports the growth of bone, heart, brain, cancer, liver, co-cultures, skin and stem cells.  It is also shown to be neo-vasculogenic; which mean it has the ability to support blood vessel growth, a requirement for all long term tissue engineering objectives.

Initially, application areas include oncology (drug development and screening) and toxicology. For example, it will allow pharmaceutical companies the ability to grow human tissue and run tests on it to be sure a drug is safe to be used in humans and may allow the pharmaceutical industry to avoid animal testing all together.  If all goes well, sometime next year the matrix will be used to culture skin and bone cells which could be transplanted back into a burn or trauma patient for example.  So while we wait for the promise of 3D printing to be realized in medicine, 3D tissue engineering seems to be already here in a decidedly low tech way.