regenHU CEO: Bioprinting Will Strengthen OrganTrans Project to 3D Print Liver Organoid

The European consortium OrganTrans is preparing to develop a tissue engineering platform capable of generating liver tissue. The proposed automated and standardized disruptive alternative solution to organ donation for patients with liver disease will stand on 3D bioprinting know-how from Swiss biomedical firm regenHU. Coordinated by Swiss research and development center CSEM, the eight partners and two transplantation centers engaged in the consortium will be using regenHU’s 3D bioprinters to produce organoid-based liver constructs with organoid laden bioinks.

In April 2020, we reported that OrganTrans would tackle the important healthcare challenge of end-stage liver disease (ESLD) by capitalizing on advancements in the regenerative medicine field, like using biofabricated liver tissue, to develop an entire value chain from the cell source to tissue engineering, biofabrication, post-processing and testing, and liver transplantation under the “compassionate use exemption” regulation (which provides an important pathway for patients with life-threatening conditions to gain access to unproven human cells and tissue products). To understand the key role of biofabrication in this innovative project, 3DPrint.com asked regenHU’s new CEO, Simon MacKenzie, to tell us more about the challenges that lie ahead for the European consortium and his company.

regenHU CEO Simon MacKenzie (Image courtesy of regenHU)

The project officially began in January 2020, what can we expect when it ends in December 2022?

The current goal of this project is to create a functional biofabricated liver construct that can be implanted into a mouse model. I consider that the OrganTrans team will accelerate new solutions for patients with liver failure. It is challenging, but we do envision successful in vivo trials. Of course, this major achievement will not be the end of the story; significant work and research will still be required to transfer these results to human clinical trials. The major remaining challenges will probably be the process scale-up to produce larger tissue and regulatory aspects.

Will this research be groundbreaking to treat liver disease in the future?

Demonstrating the feasibility of the approach in a mouse model will be groundbreaking for the disease because it will demonstrate its potential as an alternative to transplantation. Diseases like NASH [nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, an aggressive form of fatty liver disease] are increasing dramatically, and likely to be a leading cause of death within the next few years. Moreover, the difficulty of detecting the disease until it is potentially too late leads to significant challenges for therapeutic intervention, meaning transplantation will remain the main option for severely affected patients. This well-recognized need, along with the lack of donor organs will ensure bioprinted livers will continue to be well funded. But the value of the project goes beyond liver disease, as the new technologies developed in the frame of OrganTrans will not be limited to liver applications. They relate to the challenges of biofabrication of any organoid-based tissue, which can potentially be beneficial for a large variety of indications.

Can you tell me more about the role of regenHU within the OrganTrans consortium?

Such a complex and ambitious endeavor needs very different and complementary knowledge and competences. Teamwork will be a central element, first to enable, then to accelerate, these new solutions. With this in mind, we have been reorganizing regenHU to bring better project collaborative capabilities to this project, and others like it that we are engaged in. regenHU is a pioneer and global leader in tissue and organ printing technologies converging digital manufacturing, biomaterials, and biotechnology to lead transformational innovations in healthcare. We focus on delivering advancements in the instruments and software required for tissue engineering, and our technology evolving along with the biological research of our partners. We, therefore, consider these partnerships with the scientific community critical for our development.

An outline of the OrganTrans project (Image courtesy of OrganTrans)

regenHU is one of the largest contributors to this project, is this part of the company’s commitment to regenerative medicine?

We can see the need for biotechnology solutions for a wide range of disease states. Our strengths are in engineering the instruments and software necessary to allow the producers of biomaterials and the suppliers of cells to combine their products to achieve functional tissues and organs. Our commitment is to provide disruptive technologies that will enable the community to make regenerative medicine a reality, with precision and reproducibility in mind, for today’s researchers and tomorrow’s industrial biofabrication needs. One of the key challenges is the current limitation in the scale and volume of bioprinting which is linked to the reproducibility of the print. To progress into the manufacture of medical products, bioprinters will need to operate at a scale beyond current capabilities. We design our instruments with these goals in mind and have assembled a team to solve the many challenges to achieve this.

How advanced is the bioprinting community in Europe?

The 3D bioprinting field is several years behind mainstream 3D printing, with the industrialization of the instruments, biomaterials, and cells required before bioprinting can progress to commercial-scale biofabrication. However, as with continued development seen in 3D printing, the technology convergence required for tissue and organ printing that changes medical treatments will become a reality through the efforts of engineering companies like regenHU, biomaterial developers, and human cell expansion technologies, being combined in projects such as OrganTrans.

As the newly appointed CEO of the company, how do you feel taking on this project?

Successfully entering the OrganTrans consortium is just one part of the company. regenHU investors see my arrival as the catalyst to bring regenHU to the next stage in its evolution. Our goal remains the production of industrial biofabrication instruments capable of delivering the medical potential of bioprinting, novel bioinks, and stem cells. To achieve this, we are enhancing the team and structure of the company, bringing forward the development of new technologies and increasing our global footprint to better support our collaborative partners. I have spent many years in regenerative medicine and pharma and can see the potential of bioprinting to revolutionize many areas of medical science, so joining regenHU was an easy choice. As CEO, my main role is to provide the right support structure to enable our entrepreneurial engineering teams to thrive and be brave enough to push boundaries. Additionally, as we cannot achieve our end goal on our own, I am here to nurture the important connections with our user community. Only by listening to their valuable insights and solving problems with them, we will push the technology onward.

The post regenHU CEO: Bioprinting Will Strengthen OrganTrans Project to 3D Print Liver Organoid appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

The AMOS Project is Investigating Repair and Maintenance Technologies for the Aerospace Industry

The Additive Manufacturing Optimisation and Simulation (AMOS) project

There has been enormous progress in terms of aircraft safety in the past two decades. However, last year, the Aviation Safety Network recorded a total of 15 fatal airliner accidents, resulting in 556 deaths. With an estimated worldwide air traffic of about 37,800,000 flights per year and over three million passengers flying on any given day, an aviation industry objective is to keep their aircraft from potential failures with faster on-demand repairs and lower costs. For the last few years, we have seen how 3D printing techniques have been well received in the aerospace industry; the technology is transforming prototyping, the manufacture and maintenance of end-use parts, as well as the production of custom pieces; even the FAA has been developing a comprehensive regulatory plan to deal with aerospace’s industry adoption of 3D printing technology. One international research project in particular has been carrying out an investigation to help the industry understand the pros and cons of how additive manufacturing technology can help with the repair of aircraft parts. Led by the University of Sheffield’s Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), the Additive Manufacturing Optimisation and Simulation (AMOS) project focuses on additive technologies already being used in the aerospace industry. It also addresses the potential of different direct energy deposition (DED) methods, like a range of techniques which combine conventional welding tools with automated control to accurately deposit and melt metal powder or wire, or the wire-feed gas tungsten arc process used by Nuclear AMRC’s bulk additive cell. The project’s team is trying to see how these techniques can reduce the time and cost of regular maintenance and repair for aircrafts, while decreasing material waste and extending the life of expensive components. 

According to Yaoyao Fiona Zhao, a professor at McGill University’s Additive Design and Manufacturing Lab, “the project will provide a fundamental understanding of thermal and mechanical behaviour of powder and wire material during deposition, and also a simulation and optimisation platform for industrial partners to further develop their component-specific applications”.

McGill students study additive cell at Nuclear AMRC to feed into defect detection and process planning work

AMOS is a limited time project that began its research on February of 2016 and has an end-date on January, 2020. With over 2.9 million dollars invested, it is one of the first European-Canadian projects to be funded under the ‘Mobility For Growth’ collaboration in aeronautics R&D. The project focuses on several key Direct Energy Deposition AM processes that have great potential to be used as cost-effective and efficient repairing and re-manufacturing processes for aerospace components, such as turbine blades and landing gears. If successful, eventually the project will aid in reducing the weakness of aerospace components at the design stage and extend their life cycles.

The AMOS team

“There’s a host of additive manufacturing technologies available to aerospace manufacturers, but they tend to be focused on new production rather than repairing damaged parts; and the AMOS project is bringing together some of the world’s leading research organisations and companies to identify which additive technologies are best suited for repair and remanufacture, and develop them for commercial use,” explained Rosemary Gault, the European project coordinator at the University of Sheffield AMRC. 

The AMOS consortium includes nine partners from Canada, France, Sweden and the UK, including research organisations, top-tier aerospace manufacturers, and specialist technology developers. École Central de Nantes in France;  GKN Aerospace Engine Systems, McGill University of Montreal and jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney are some of the partners. It is supported by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme and by Canadian funding agencies CARIC and NSERC.

An AMOS team-member working on bulk-additive-cell

The project will involve a range of additive manufacturing technologies used at the participating centres and companies, including laser powder and robotic laser wire systems operated by Liburdi in Canada, a CNC laser powder facility at Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France, and robotic powder diode laser and wire-feed gas tungsten arc facilities at the University of Sheffield AMRC. At McGill University, AMOS is employing an additive machine which will be used to deposit Titanium. No surprise there, the use of Titanium has grown driven by needs in the aerospace industry, and according to a report by SmarTech, shipments of titanium powders grew by 32% in 2018, with the report predicting a 24% growth in titanium alloy revenues in 2019. As the metal AM market grows, so does the demand for metal powders. Material research will focus on three widely used aerospace alloys: Titanium 6-4 alloy (in wire and powder form), AerMet 100 highstrength stainless steel powder and the nickel-chromium superalloy Inconel 718.

According to AMOS, results for Inconel proved that wire-deposited materials showed better tensile properties than the powder-deposited material, for both the as-built material and the interface region. For titanium wire, yield stress, ultimate tensile strength and elongation are comparable with the standard reference material. However, when using powder, the results were below those of the reference standard. The investigation into Aermet 100 is ongoing but the majority of the tests have been completed, although work is also continuing on low-cycle fatigue and crack propagation.

AMOS Project: the machine used to deposit Titanium, located at McGill University in Montreal

The Nuclear AMRC’s research for Amos has generated huge amounts of metallurgical data for quantifying the variations between conventional, as-built and repaired materials, while investigating the interface integrity, performance and predictability of the alloy materials in different orientations, and how this data can facilitate the development of DED repair standards. The Nuclear AMRC team is now working with samples featuring a series of intentional defects, produced by GKN Aerospace. The samples have been scanned using an innovative inspection process developed by Canadian partners Liburdi and McGill University, and the Nuclear AMRC’s non-destructive testing specialists are benchmarking the new technique against current practice. Looking into automated processes for detecting defects to facilitate DED repairs. According to the specialists, they can now identify certain types of defects such as voids and tool marks relatively easily, while cracks are more challenging.

Aerospace manufacturing companies are trying to make their aircraft fully sustainable and 3D printing technology is helping with that by making parts lighter, which in turn saves the companies money from less fuel consumption, emissions, and increased speed. Most commercial aircraft makers are racing towards additive manufacturing technology to cut costs in repair and maintenance as well. Aircraft maintenance companies are under a lot of financial pressure from carriers, who demand these low cost repairs using high quality processes and spare parts. Other projects, like RepAir, are also tackling this issue with additive manufacturing, engaging in research on future repair and maintenance for the aerospace industry and proving that the technology adds new opportunities for onsite maintenance and repair. With 3D printing taking center stage in aircraft repair and maintenance, as well as becoming the protagonist in many projects worldwide, perhaps we can expect better built structures, higher safety features on planes and even fewer fatal airliner accidents thanks to maintenance efforts on site.

European Innovation Hub and Test Bed to Focus on Developing and Implementing 3D Printed Electronics

More and more, we are using special industrial 3D printers, with inkjet and aerosol jet technology, to embed conductive components within our intelligent products in what we call 3D printed electronics. Items like ECG electrodes and contactless payment cards use these embedded components to perform wireless activities and readings, like measuring the frequency of a person’s heart beats and paying for something at the store. The technology makes it possible to 3D print conductive circuits on nearly any surface imaginable, and the market for it is estimated at $32 billion outside Europe alone. Now, the continent is working to play catch-up.

In a move to increase Europe’s competitiveness in this field, and further prepare for Industry 4.0, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 has granted €10.6 million in funding to a new European innovation hub, led by the Danish Technological Institute (DTI), that will focus on 3D printed electronics.

“Printed electronics opens up a whole world of new opportunities, as complex constructions can be embedded just like using 3D printing, at prices able to compete with mass-produced goods,” said Zachary James Davis, DTI’s Project Coordinator for the hub. “Quite simply because electronics can be produced from CAD drawings and printed on flexible materials, as already used in architecture and 3D print.”

DTI researchers have been working with 3D printed electronics since 2016. This work, coupled with its efforts in encouraging the adoption of 3D printing, is what makes the university the perfect leader for the new hub as it works to help Europe’s manufacturing industry gain a strong position. Together with 16 RTOs and businesses, such as Fraunhofer, Eindhoven University of Technology, RISE, and Axia, DTI will develop an open innovation test bed, or LEE-BED, which will function as the hub and focus on 3D printed electronics.

Enterprises that apply to join LEE-BED will have their businesses cases evaluated first. If they are selected to participate, they will receive access to RTOs which most closely match their personal requirements. In addition, the chosen enterprises will also have access to expertise and equipment from designated RTOs in order to support their own 3D printing electronics development efforts, with no financial risk, all the way from the prototyping phase up to pilot production and full-scale manufacturing.

Davis explained, “All the partners in LEE BED will provide their various skills and facilities within printed electronics to enterprises that want to integrate and embed electronics into their products.

“Enterprises will be able to prove the viability of new technologies without major investment and financial risk during the all-important initial phase. We have already started working with jewellery giant Swarovski, looking into the idea of intelligent light in their crystals that can be integrated with clothing and home interiors.”

In addition to Swarovski, LEE-BED also has three other industrial cases with European companies: Acciona, Grafietic, and Maier.

LEE-BED is made up of three phases:

  1. Technological & economic modeling, including lifecycle analysis, patent research and safety/legislation audit
  2. The pilot project using current, and upgraded, pilot lines for nanomaterials, nano-enabled formulations, and 2D/3D printing of components
  3. Knowledge transfer, to include evaluation of intellectual property rights (IPR) and patents, investment possibilities, and standards/safety screening

The purpose of LEE-BED is to spread awareness about 3D printed electronics, and develop and implement them across Europe in order to “break down barriers” for the technology to be used. The goal is to keep the European manufacturing industry in the EU, as opposed to outsourcing high-tech projects elsewhere.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below. 

[Images provided by Danish Technological Institute]

3D Printing News Briefs: March 23, 2019

We’ve got plenty of business news to share in this week’s 3D Printing News Briefs, but first we’ll start off with something fun – the winners have been announced for this year’s Additive World DfAM Challenge. Moving right along, BeAM is now a Tier 2 member of the ARTC, and PostProcess Technologies has announced improved processing times for SLA resin removal. Protolabs is offering new anodizing services, in addition to teaming up with Wohlers Associates, and Arkema will soon open a new PEKK plant in the US. Continuing with new things, a new AM digital career growth platform just launched, and there’s a new open project call for the European AMable project. Finally, GoPrint3D is the new UK distributor for Mayku and its desktop vacuum casting unit.

Winners Announces for Additive World DfAM Challenge 2019

This week during an awards dinner at the Additive World Conference in Eindhoven, Ultimaker’s Steven van de Staak, Chairman of the 5-member jury for this year’s Additive Industries’ Design for Additive Manufacturing Challenge, announced the two winners and their “inspiring use cases of industrial 3D metal printing.”

Obasogie Okpamen from The Landmark University in Nigeria won first place, and an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer, in the student category for his Twin Spark Engine Connection Rod. While the connection rod that he redesigned for an Alfa Romeo 75 Twin Spark Turbo engine has not yet been fully tested, he won “because of the example it sets” for distributed localized manufacturing of spare parts with 3D printing. Dutch company K3D took home first place, and an Ultimaker 3, in the professional category for the Dough Cutting Knife it developed for Kaak Group, a leader in the bakery equipment world. The team integrated mechanical parts into the design, which can be 3D printed without any support structures and has improved functionality. The knife sits in a dough extrusion line and due to its light weight less knives and robot arms can do the same amount of cutting. This means that the extrusion line itself is cheaper. Furthermore the knife has been optimized for a cleaner cut with less knife sticking to the dough.

BeAM Joins Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre

Membership agreement signing ceremony held in ARTC

France-based BeAM, which has subsidiaries in the US and Singapore and was acquired by AddUp this summer, is now partnering with the Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (ARTC) as a Tier 2 member in an effort to expand its research activities in southeast Asia. The center provides a collaborative platform, which will help BeAM as it continues developing its Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology with companies from the aerospace, consumer goods, marine, and oil & goods sectors.

This summer, BeAM, which also became a member of the Aachen Centre for Additive Manufacturing earlier this month, will install its Modulo 400, featuring a controlled atmosphere system, at ARTC, so other members can safely develop non-reactive and reactive materials. The two will also work to develop process monitoring systems that can expand DED’s range of applications.

PostProcess Technologies Announces New Solution for SLA Resin Removal

A new and improved solution for SLA resin removal by PostProcess Technologies vastly improves process times by 5-10 minutes – quite possibly the fastest on the market. The system can clean up to five times as many parts before detergent saturation when compared to solvent resin removal, and is part of the company’s automated AM post-print offering. The patent-pending solution, which also reduces environmental hazards and preserves fine feature details, was validated with eight different resin materials in several production environments, and uses the company’s proprietary AUTOMAT3D software and SVC (Submersed Vortex Cavitation) technology in the DEMI and CENTI machines.

“PostProcess’ latest innovation of the most advanced SLA resin removal solution in the world reinforces our commitment to providing the AM industry with transformative post- printing solutions enabling the market to scale. SLA is one of the most popular 3D printing technologies in the world. No matter what volume of printing, any SLA user can benefit from the remarkable efficiencies of our solution’s decreased processing time, increased throughput, increased detergent longevity, and improved safety,” said PostProcess Technologies CEO Jeff Mize. “PostProcess has designed the world’s first complete SLA resin removal system, available only from the pioneers in forward-thinking 3D post-printing.”

The new SLA Resin Removal technology will be on display at PostProcess booth P21 at the upcoming AMUG Conference in Chicago. You can also read about it in the company’s new whitepaper.

Protolabs Offering Aluminum Anodizing; Partners with Wohlers Associates

As part of its on-demand production service, digital manufacturer Protolabs is now offering aluminium anodizing in response to demand from customers in need of a single-source solution. Anodizing forms a protective oxide layer by applying a thin, protective coat to the part, which increases abrasion resistance and creates a barrier against corrosion. The company will be offering two levels of this service for Aluminum 6082 and 7075: hard anodizing to ISI 10074 for parts requiring protection from harsh environments, and decorative anodizing to ISO 7599 for parts that need an aesthetic finish. All parts will be sealed, unless they need to be painted post-anodizing.

“Talking to our clients, we realised that if they needed to anodise an aluminium part it was often difficult for them to source and then manage a supplier. They not only have to do all the research and then raise a separate purchase order, but often find that the supplier only accepts large quantities of parts in an order, which isn’t great for low volume runs,” explained Stephen Dyson, Special Operations Manager at Protolabs.

“Keeping the entire production process with a single supplier makes perfect sense for manufacturers. It means they can get their finished parts shipped in a matter of days and our technical team can advise them through the entire process, right from the initial design of the part to the best approach for the final anodising finish.”

In other Protolabs news, the company is partnering up with AM consultants Wohlers Associates to jointly hold an immersive course on DfAM. The class, which is invitation-only, will take place over the course of three days near Raleigh, North Carolina, and will end at Protolabs’ 77,000 sq. ft. 3D printing facility. Olaf Diefel, Associate Consultant at Wohlers Associates, and Principle Consultant and President Terry Wohlers will lead the discussion, in addition to being joined by several Protolabs engineers who are skilled in polymer and metal 3D printing.

“Designing for AM offers unique challenges and opportunities not found in traditional design methods. Protolabs brings tremendous depth of expertise and leadership in 3D printing. We’re thrilled to work together to equip attendees with technical skills and manufacturing knowledge needed to unlock the full potential of additive manufacturing,” said Wohlers.

Arkema Opening New PEKK Plant

Arkema, one of the largest specialty chemical and advanced materials developers, has been busily producing polyetherketoneketone, or PEKK, in France. But this coming Monday, March 24th, it is celebrating its new Kepstan PEKK plant near Mobile, Alabama with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The durability and customizable abilities of PEKK make it a good material for a variety of 3D printing purposes. Monday’s event will take place from 10:30 am to 1:30, and will also include VIP comments and lunch. The increased volume of this PEAK material will shake up the high-performance polymer market making PEKK a viable alternative to PEEK and PEI.

New AM Digital Career Growth Platform Launched

A free interactive platform to help AM professionals enhance their skills and fulfill career opportunities is now launching. i-AMdigital, which counts HP as one of its backing partners, is a joint venture between AM industry recruiter Alexander Daniels Global, digital venture company TES Network, and web and UX design company De Wortel van Drie. The platform was created to develop a growing AM talent pool, and uses smart matching and AI to offer customized career advice, courses, training, and job opportunities.

“There just isn’t enough talent out there. At the same time the learning and development landscape for additive manufacturing is very fragmented. This makes it difficult for individuals and organisations alike to access courses that can help them upskill. i-AMdigital solves both problems through our digital career growth platform,” said CEO and Co-Founder Nick Pearce of Alexander Daniels Global.

“It is an essential tool for the AM industry that will allow talent to grow their career and make an impact in additive manufacturing. It will provide organisations access to a growing and educated talent force to address their hiring needs and a marketplace for learning and development that can help them upskill their existing workforce in the latest technologies.”

AMable Launches Second Open Project Call

The AMable project, which receives funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, has just launched its second project call for proposals and ideas that can be applied to AM. The project is continuing to look for new ways to innovate on services for mid-caps and SMEs in the EU, and chosen teams will receive support from the AMable unit.

AMable is a Factories of the Future (FoF) project participating in I4MS (ICT for Manufacturing SMEs), and is working to increase adoption of AM technologies through the EU. The project will build a digital model that will provide unbiased access to the best AM knowledge in Europe in an effort to support this adoption. For more details on the call, visit the AMable site.

Express Group Appointed New UK Distributor for Mayku

GoPrint3D, a division of Express Group Ltd, has just been named the new UK distributor for London startup Mayku. The startup created a desktop vacuum casting unit called the FormBox, which is a handy partner for your 3D printer. Once you create a 3D printed mold, you can put it inside the compact FormBox, which is powered by any vacuum cleaner and works with many materials like wax and concrete, to cast a series from it – putting the power of making in your own hands.

An architect forming a dome template on the FormBox.

 

“We are thrilled to have partnered with Express Group on our UK and Ireland distribution, building on our existing servicing and repair relationship,” said Alex Smilansky, Mayku Co-Founder and CEO. “When we founded Mayku, our goal was to bring the power of making to as wide an audience as possible. The partnership with Express Group will allow us to deliver a first-class making experience to more people than ever before.”

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