3D printing inspires a number of intriguing futures. One of these futures involves the possibility of using this technology to heal people of various physical ailments. For some time now, the medical community has explored the use of 3D printing to make tissues, facsimiles of organs, (primarily for testing), replacement bones and bone plates, joints, and so on, and the technology continues to advance.

3D Systems, a company with decades of experience in the field of 3D printing recently announced plans to significantly expand its development efforts on regenerative medicine and bioprinting. The Figure 4 technology created by Chuck Hull will play a role in this expansion. Many of you may know that Chuck is co-founder, Executive Vice President, and Chief Technology Officer of 3D Systems, as well as the founder of the 3D printing technology known as stereolithography. He joins me today to discuss the developments in bioprinting and 3D printing’s role. Thank you for being with me here today.

Chuck Hull:
Yes. You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here, Leslie.

Leslie:
My first question is, what technical developments have occurred in 3D printing and materials that led to this announcement from 3D Systems? Kind of like, why now?

Chuck:
Why now? The background … We’ve been working on a program for a few years now with the company United Therapeutics, which is a pharmaceutical company in lung health care, with the objective of producing transplantable lungs using of course 3D printing and all the associated cell biology that’s required for that. In the process of working on that, we’ve developed a lot of technology around this field, especially in the printers and in the kind of hydrogel materials and all the software and so forth.

We’ve finally gotten to the point where there’s enough interest in regenerative medicine that we thought, “Okay, let’s go ahead and further expand and develop in that field.” We’ve worked with what’s called “solid organs” with United Therapeutics and their subsidiary, Lung Biotechnology. So, we’ll be working also in basically non-solid organs, the other tissues of the body.

Leslie:
So, you’re actually talking about creating a transplantable organ using 3D printing technology?

Chuck:
Yes. That’s our project with Lung Biotechnology.

Leslie:
Now, there’s been a lot of thoughts about that over the past few years. How far away that development are we?

Chuck:
Probably to answer that, it would be our partner, Lung Biotechnology. I don’t want to speak for them, but let’s just say we’ve just made great progress in that field.

Leslie:
That’s amazing. I always thought there were too many medical complications to make organ transplant feasible in that particular way.

Chuck:
Well, it’s certainly a difficult problem, but certainly not unsolvable. There’s just a great demand for transplantable organs. More people need organs than are available.
Not just for lungs, but obviously for other organs, as well. So, the question, “Why lung?” It’s the most difficult organ to make, but we’re there because that’s the business and vision that Martine Rothblatt, who’s the CEO of United Therapeutics, has. So, we’ve been working with her and her team on this pretty diligently. It’s an amazing project.

Leslie:
Okay. Now, the information mentioned something called ” Print to Perfusion.” Could you go into a little bit more detail about what that is and how it’s involved in the creation of tissues?

Chuck:
Sure. Of course, the things that we print for regenerative medicine are hydrogels, soft, maybe kind of gooey materials. But in our case, printed with a very high resolution. The goal is to print that, and then of course clean it and maybe have other fluids and gases in it to prepare it, and then to perfuse it with cells, typically blood or a blood substitute, down through the arteries and veins and so forth of the tissue.

So, there’s a whole process there, from printing the part to getting it ready to perfuse, and then perfusing it. Basically, we have a technique or a technology that sequences through those steps all in place, so that you don’t have to do a lot of excess handling of this delicate tissue.

Leslie:
Okay. Is this the only kind of tissue that you’re going to be working with? Or will perhaps there be other kinds of tissues coming about?

Chuck:
Yeah, I think I mentioned we’re working with United Therapeutics on lungs, and potentially the whole field of solid organs. This new initiative that we have is to look at other tissues in the body other than solid organs. So, basically any tissue which can’t be healed through normal medicine and basically needs to be replaced, that’s a candidate for what we’re working on.

Leslie:
Now, given this announcement, how far does this take the state of bioprinting, as far as its development? Where are we now in the realm of the overall category of bioprinting?

Chuck:
Bioprinting, I guess right now, is what you would call a nascent industry. There’s been just a tremendous amount of university and research institution work in this field, as you know, and a reasonable amount of regenerative medicine from organizations like Wake Forest, who pioneered a lot of the work in regenerative medicine. But it hasn’t gotten to the point where you and I can go to the hospital and have somebody implant tissue into our bodies.
So, that’s our goal, is to take this nascent industry and move it toward actual medical devices that can be used for treatment. You may know that 3D Systems is very active in medical devices. We have a healthcare group who, that’s their business. So, we’re very familiar with medical devices, and FDA, and 3D printing around that. So, to some extent then, this is an extension of what we already do, but into living tissues.

Leslie:
You want to take any crystal ball forecasts into how long it’s going to take before we can go to the hospital and get an organ transplant like that?

Chuck:
Yeah. If you’ve ever heard me, you know I always say I’m not a futurist. The future is very difficult to predict, obviously, and this is all R&D, so it’s got all those challenges. But that said, we’re really optimistic that in the next few years, you’ll start seeing this kind of treatment rollout.

Leslie:
What are some of the current challenges that 3D printing is facing in order to bring bioprinting further along?

Chuck:
Well, each tissue has its own challenges in terms of its anatomy and the type of material that the tissue is. So, there’s certainly the 3D printing aspect of it, but also certainly the biology, and the biology is the more difficult part. It’s understanding how the cells of that tissue work, and how they need to be. If you will, what kind of geometry is going to work with that biology and the 3D printing, that you create little homes for the cells.

Leslie:
It sounds like the two technologies are going to have to work in concert, where you know what one is happening, and that’s going to influence the development of the other one, and it’s going to kind of keep leapfrogging each other?

Chuck:
Yeah. I don’t know about leapfrogging, but they definitely have to work together. So, again, our program with United Therapeutics, we work with a team of basically biologists and cell biologists. That’s what they do, is help us understand, we help them understand, and we work together on this.

Leslie:
Now, I understand you’re using the Figure 4 technology to create these structures or to help this gel matrix. Do you see any potential developments or changes coming to the Figure 4 as you continue to understand more about the biology of the tissues that we’re working with?

Chuck:
Perhaps. In our case, it’s obviously very high-resolution imaging, because the structures of the body are very detailed. We’ve learned how to do that. Also, it’s a different kind of material handling. Again, as I say, we’ve learned to do that. So, it’s quite possible that in the future we might see some fallout from this technology and the Figure 4, into industrial Figure 4.

Leslie:
Was there a possibility that some of what you might be learning will be usable in other industries? For example, maybe aerospace, or semiconductor? Or is this primarily going to be focused you think in the medical field?

Chuck:
Certainly our focus is medical. Whether we can extend some of our learnings is not on the plate right now.

Leslie:
Okay. Any final thoughts or any words about this development that you want to mention?

Chuck:
Well, I guess it’s certainly an exciting field. All of the 3D System employees and our partners at United Therapeutics are really excited about what they’re doing and what the possibilities are in terms of other tissues and so forth. So, probably the final word is, it’s a really interesting field to be working in, and very exciting.

Leslie:
Quite a lot of development going on right now. It’ll be very interesting to see if we actually get a 3D-printed organ capable of being transplanted.

Chuck:
Yeah. I would say it’s not “yet,” but it’s “when.” How long is it going to take to do it? The principles are pretty well-established.

Leslie:
Well, I thank you for being here with me today, Chuck. It was a pleasure.

Chuck Hull:
My pleasure. Yeah. Thank you.