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Category: 3D printing – Page 76

United Therapeutics will license, develop, and commercialize CollPlant Holdings’ recombinant human collagen (rhCollagen) and BioInk technology for 3D bioprinting of solid-organ scaffolds for human transplants, the companies said today, through a collaboration that could generate more than $44 million.

Through its wholly- owned organ manufacturing and transplantation-focused subsidiary Lung Biotechnology PBC, United Therapeutics has been granted what the companies termed an exclusive license “throughout the universe” by CollPlant to its technology for producing and using rhCollagen-based BioInk for 3D bioprinted lung transplants.

Lung Biotechnology PBC is a public benefit corporation formed to address the acute national shortage of transplantable lungs and other organs with a variety of technologies that either delay the need for such organs or expand the supply.


A tiny piece of 3D-printed tech could foreshadow the future of medicine.

A team from MIT, Draper, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has created a 3D-printed smart pill that can release medications in the stomach and monitor temperature for up to a month at a time — and they believe they’ve only scratched the surface of its capabilities.

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GEO Satellites business globally make roughly 80% of the overall Space market business with $270B revenues claimed in 2017. How a Space Industry of such kind level of business can disappear is not an argument for many years to come but how a transformation of the Satellite configuration can impact the Space Industry this represents a real topic.

I already discussed in my previous article of how the advancement of A.I. bringing to autonomous missions for satellites, 3D printing permitting on-orbit Manufacturing and Robotic Assembly are not far away technologies, with the mature advancements achieved in on-Ground applications, to be applied to Space Satellites. Already today recently born Startups are working on Satellites on-board software/hardware permitting more autonomous tasks with decision making capability without being piloted from remote on-Ground Stations, significantly reducing operative costs.

Arriving to build fully autonomous Satellites is just a matter of time, with remotely controlled operations to be applied only for safety contingencies. The foreseen growth in the number of small satellites by order of magnitudes push the market this way.

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Medical research has taken a leap into the future as Russian scientists have managed to grow a mouse’s thyroid in zero gravity using a 3D bioprinter on the International Space Station (ISS). And human organs may be next in line.

The breakthrough device dubbed Organaut was delivered to the ISS by a Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft on December 3 by Expedition 58.

In what is no longer a plot of a sci-fi movie, the innovative device created a mouse’s thyroid in zero gravity. And the result was a success. Invitro, whose subsidiary 3D Bioprinting Solutions built the printer, told Ria Novosti: “We received photos from space. The camera clearly shows a living construction of a mouse’s thyroid being assembled.”

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The discovery by researchers at the University of Leeds marks a major breakthrough which has eluded material scientists for more than 30 years.

The ‘auxetic’ stretching property, which is found in human tendons and cat skin, had only been recreated using conventional materials.

The new material could pave the way for commercially viable products as creating it does not involve expensive, complex engineering processes such as 3D printing, according to the findings published in the journal Nature Communications.

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3D bioprinting continues to diversify as more and more companies and research organizations join the field, each bringing their own take on the technology to the table. French collaborative platform 3D.fab has an intriguing approach towards bioprinting that involves a freeform robot capable of directly printing on a part of the body. In the video below, the BioAssemblyBot prints what appears to be a bandage directly on an arm:

The “bandage” is actually a bio-ink made from the skin cells of a patient. When applied to the patient’s skin, it forms an autograft that will, within a couple of weeks, create new skin. The BioAssemblyBot is capable of both additive and contour 3D printing, as well as pick and place and assembly thanks to its interchangeable tools. It’s only one of 3D.fab’s bioprinting technologies; the platform has a few other bioprinters in development as well, including another skin printer.

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