Case Stories

After inventing an impressive array of innovative medical devices, Dean Kamen set his sights on a new goal - inventing an entire industry. In 2017, Kamen started ARMI, the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute - an organization whose mission is to “make practical the large-scale manufacturing of engineered tissues and tissue-related technologies, to benefit existing industries and grow new ones.” 

When someone has heart disease, it means the blood vessels in their heart have become clogged. This can lead to a heart attack.

A patient with clogged arteries can get treatments such as angioplasties or coronary bypass surgeries, but these options only treat or manage symptoms - they do not cure heart disease.

Risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking can lead to blocked arteries.

Heart disease is one of the most common and costly diseases in the United States:

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

• One person dies every 37 seconds from cardiovascular disease in the United States

• About 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year - that’s 1 in every 4 deaths

• Heart disease costs the United States about $219 billion / year (this includes the cost of healthcare services, medicines, and lost productivity)

Jay Hoying and his team at Advanced Solutions Life Sciences are working toward a real cure for clogged arteries: printing replacement blood vessels for the heart using their 3D printing technology.

In the future, if a patient could receive a new blood vessel to replace the damaged one in their heart, they could be cured of heart disease and drastically lower their risk of having a heart attack.

Biosensors use technology to detect the presence of specific substances in the body.

Dr. Marcie Black and her colleagues at Advanced Silicon Group are inventing new types of biosensors that can detect diseases such as lung cancer - using only a blood test.

Biosensors have the potential to make the process of diagnosing diseases quicker, cheaper, and more widely available.

Innovations in diagnostic medicine are improving outcomes for patients. Biosensors can detect a patient’s specific biomarkers, allowing doctors to determine the most effective type of treatment for their disease. Biosensors also make diagnostic procedures easier and cheaper than performing biopsies.

After being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, Quintano’s doctor tested him for biomarkers to determine if he would be a candidate for the most effective form of treatment for lung cancer: targeted therapy. This test helped Quintano regain quality of life.

Biosensors have another important use in biofabrication: keeping new tissue growing strong.

Just like a plant needs the right amounts of water and sunlight to grow, new tissues needs precise amounts of ‘food’ to stay alive.

Growing tissues eat proteins called growth factors. Growth factors must be carefully and precisely fed to tissue in the correct amounts.

Biosensors can be used to measure how much growth factor a tissue needs, yielding healthy cells that grow faster and at a lower cost.

Credit: MDDI

• 37 million Americans are living with Chronic Kidney Disease - that’s 1 in 7 people

• In 2016, 726,331 Americans had kidney failure and needed dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive

• Last year, 100,000 Americans were waiting for a kidney transplant, but only 21,167 received one - just 21% of patients received a life-saving kidney

• 12 people die every day while waiting for a kidney transplant

What’s it like to live with kidney failure? Shari waited for seven years to get a transplant. During that entire time, she received dialysis treatments three days a week to keep her alive. 

Even though printing on-demand kidneys is still a few years away, the 3D printed kidney tissue has another vital use right now: testing new drugs.

Instead of testing on living people or animals, pharmaceutical companies can use the living tissue created through biofabrication to see if new medicines can help treat diseases such as kidney disease.

Credit: DEKA Research

Luke was one of the first patients to receive an experimental treatment developed by Dr. Anthony Atala at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Atala created a new bladder especially for Luke made from his own cells.

Luke was one of the first people ever to receive a 3D-printed bladder. He is part of a long-term clinical trial to ensure the safety and effectiveness of his replacement organ.

Dr. Atala is a pioneer in the field of tissue regeneration. Through his work at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University, he developed a way to reconfigure a regular inkjet printer to print out cells instead of ink. Those cells will grow into replacement organs for patients like Luke. 

After receiving his replacement bladder at the age of 10, Luke’s treatment allowed him to live a normal life. He and Dr. Atala reunited 10 years later to talk about the success of the procedure. 

Credit: Wake Forest School of Medicine

After his injury, Brian was treated by Dr. Badylak, who developed an innovating procedure to regrow muscle tissue. By implanting a scaffold into Brian’s arm, Dr. Badylak’s technique signaled Brian’s own stem cells to grow onto the scaffold and develop into new muscle tissue.

Dr. Badylak’s technique of triggering damaged muscle tissue to regrow on an extracellular matrix has been successful in many people. Made from substances such as pig bladder, the extracellular matrix is implanted in the wounded area and gives the body a helping-hand to repair itself. 

In another experiment, Dr. Badylak implanted extracellular matrices into people with leg injuries. These patients made dramatic improvements after surgery - many saw significant regrowth of their leg muscle tissue. 

Brian is one of many servicepeople who have returned from war zones with grievous injuries. There is hope that advancements in regenerative medicine will help improve their futures and even heal the wounds they suffered at war.

Credit: AP Photo/University of Pittsburgh Medical Center