Developing printers to print organ tissues

Three Indian ventures were part of the 100 from around the world that were picked earlier this year as technology pioneers by the World Economic Forum for 2023. Pooja Venkatesh, Piyush Padmanabhan, and Alok Medikepura Anil’s Next Big Innovations Labs (NBIL) was one of them. NBIL has built a customisable 3D bioprinter platform that enables the fabrication of complex and functional human tissues and organs.

Pooja, Piyush and Alok had been keen to do some- thing in 3D printing. Pooja and Piyush had backgrounds in biotechnology. Pooja had done BE in biotechnology from PES University in Bengaluru, and Master’s in management from Bayes Business School in London. Piyush had done a BTech in biotechnology from Vellore Institute of Technology. Alok had done aerospace engineering from Boston University and a Master’s in aerospace dynamics from Cranfield University, UK. The three began exploring ways in which the healthcare domain could benefit from the use of 3D printing.

Pooja says Piyush had seen a lot of patients on the organ transplant wait list, and had seen their quality of life. “Some of us had also lost family members because of lack of organ availability and organ donors,” she says. That was the trigger for them to get into bioprinting tissues.

Pooja says they under stood there was a need for transplantable or absorbable tissues which are natural and innate to the human body. “And since we understood how 3D printing works, for us it was like a natural step,” she says. The organs and tissues are developed from biomaterials, which can be natural (collagen, gelatin, hyaluronic acid), or synthetic (like alginate – a polymer obtained from seaweed – and cellulose). “Scientists carefully choose these materials based on the characteristics and native architecture of the tissue or organ they want to create. Together with cells, biomaterials become the ‘bioink’ – the special ‘ink’ used in this cutting-edge process,” Pooja says.

NBIL’s technology allows scientists to work with multiple cell types – the printer head allows them to print multiple cell types. This enables them to also develop complex organs.

The patented technology, the Trivima Bioprinter – customisable according to requirements – has been designed and built entirely in-house. The bioprinters are being used in research labs across India, including at IIT Hyderabad and King George’s Medical University, Lucknow.

NBIL in partnership with Mumbai-based biosciences company HiMedia has begun scaling its offerings worldwide. The selection to the WEF technology pioneers’ programme will enable NBIL to have a two-year engagement with the forum. That could help accelerate the globalisation effort.