Called OxSyBio, the Oxford spin-out will continue professor Hagan Bayley’s pioneering work in 3D droplet printing technology. Leveraging Bayley’s technique for printing water droplets that are coated in a thin film membrane, the OxSyBio team will attempt to further the state of the art by producing a printer that can be used to create tissues during surgical operations.
According to Bayley, “Our long-term goal is to develop a synthetic-tissue printer that a surgeon can use in the operating theatre. In ten years' time, the use of pieces of synthetic tissue will be commonplace.”
For the time being, the OxSyBio team will have to refine their rather rudimentary printing technique and begin creating more advanced materials that are truer facsimiles of complete human cells. To that end, Bayley’s group will begin their new venture looking to integrate printed tissue-like materials with living tissues. If initial efforts are successful researchers will begin to develop a printable material that is composed of actual living cells.
Although Bayley and his team have demonstrated the ability to produce extremely accurate simulations of living tissues, the ability to engineer and deposit actual living materials is quite elusive, and even Bayley admits that “[t]he fabrication of complex synthetic organs is a more distant prospect.”
While a number of firms across the globe are investing heavily in the idea of bioprinting, it seems that significant advances in its fundamental technology are still necessary before bespoke tissues and organs make it to a hospital near you.
Nevertheless, the prospect of fully functional bio-printed tissues will likely become a reality within the next few decades. If the technology can mature on that timeline physicians capable of creating tissues and organs on demand might soon dwarf the miracles preformed by contemporary medicine.
Image Courtesy of Oxford University