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#IS IT COST EFFECTIVE TO 3D PRINT TERRAIN SOFTWARE#
In the hierarchy of venture capital interest, software companies are at the top, boosted by their comparable ease and low cost despite their high rate of failure. Salehizadeh has yet to invest in a bioprinting company, though he's invested in other types of healthcare companies dealing in biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical devices. It remains a challenge to get venture capitalists interested in technologies whose development could take in excess of 10 years, according to venture capitalist Bijan Salehizadeh, co-founder of NaviMed Capital. The latter, however, have not been lining up, overcome by caution in the face of a very young, emerging technology. Following the path of many similar startups, the company plans to cobble it together, hoping for $15m in grants and the rest in private capital from potential partners and venture capitalists.
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That leaves Bosworth, the CEO, scratching her head about where to find the $40m needed to get her technology to market. It is testing its breast tissue on mice through a National Science Foundation grant, and it will need about seven years before getting to human trials. TeVido is facing a similar financial wall. Mikael Renard, executive vice president of Organovo's commercial operations, says more funding would likely enable the company to succeed in a shorter timeframe, though for now 3D printed organs remain decades away. While revenues doubled to $1.2m between 20, losses increased nearly eight-fold to $9.3m in the same time period. Organovo's losses from operations, for instance, have far outpaced even its rapidly growing revenues. The vision is that within decades, scientists will be able to take a biopsy of the liver of someone needing a replacement and then print a new 3D version – "the Holy Grail of what this technology could do," according to Bosworth.īut it's early days, and bioprinting companies are scrambling for money to fund their utopian ambitions. San Diego-based Organovo, one of the pioneers in the field, is experimenting with bioprinted liver tissue prototypes. Scientists at Cornell University have bioprinted prosthetic human ears, while agriculture-focused Modern Meadow is printing meat and leather. Welcome to the revolutionary, maddening, promising and currently very unprofitable world of bioprinting.ģD guns and 3D tchotchkes are already de rigeur conversational topics for policy wonks and science magazines, but fewer people talk about the booming field of 3D printing for human body parts. At the end, if TeVido succeeds, it might be fighting for only a tiny portion of a market that will grow to a negligible $1.9bn in value by 2025, according to Lux Research, a research firm for emerging technologies. "The assays to tell whether bioprinting works are really, really time consuming and expensive."įor TeVido, Bosworth estimates seven more years and $40m of tests, including innumerable grant applications and attempts to woo reluctant venture capitalists. "If you 3D print a dress, or a gun, it is pretty easy to tell right away if it works," she said. Even if TeVido can solve such scientific conundrums, making the technology practical and cost effective will prove a great technical challenge, according to Griffith. In addition, the long time it takes to print in high resolution requires better methods to keep cells stable during the lengthy manufacturing process. No printhead design has produced the detailed resolution needed for fragile cells that constitute tissues and organs, said Linda Griffith, director of the Center of Gynepathology Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Having got through the whole emotional trauma that they may die, many women are left disfigured and have to deal with that, also," said Laura Bosworth, CEO and co-founder of TeVido.īut before that implant can be made and sold to breast-cancer patients, TeVido faces a grueling and unprofitable years-long trip to perfect the technology. Its destiny, as planned by TeVido, is to become an implant for one of the 200,000 women diagnosed annually in the US with breast cancer, 60% of whom choose lumpectomies that leave their natural breasts abnormally shaped. It bears an uncanny resemblance to colorless Jell-O. A computer-programmed script instructs the printer to deposit the cells in layers upon layers, slowly forming a vaguely biological shape.Īs the printer wends its way back and forth with a scratchy, buzzy sound, a transparent, gelatinous substance starts to pile up. Where you might expect paper in the tray, a specialized gel sits ready to catch the finished product. The cartridge, which usually holds ink, is filled with living human cells. W hat looks like the skeleton of a desk-size, inkjet printer sits in the offices of TeVido BioDevices in Austin, Texas.