Autodesk to Create Bio-Printing Software

Autodesk has long been the standard for many drafting applications. The California company’s product line spans across disciplines as diverse as civil drafting, mechanical engineering and architectural modeling; and it could soon grow to include tissue design.

Organovo, a bio-printing company that we wrote about earlier this year, is partnering with Autodesk to create software that can model the intricate branching structures of blood vessels. Blood vessels are the bio-mechanism for transporting blood and oxygen though the human body. Without blood vessels, cells and tissues would quickly die. So it comes as no surprise that Organovo would like to find a way to accurately design blood vessel systems that could be tailored to each bio-printed tissue sample.

At the moment there is no time line for when this software might be available, and both Autodesk and Organovo are still working through the “proof of concept” phase. However, Carlos Olguin best characterizes what this software could mean if it were to be successfully developed, “This [software] would make it less important for a biologist to have a specific software background… Right now, they need to write their own programs or partner with a specific engineer. We’re trying to give them tools to iterate faster.”