tissue engineering Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Bioprinted Implant May Help Paralyzed People Walk Again

AHA Publisher — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:00:51 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – Medical science has not yet found a way to restore walking ability in someone paralyzed from a traumatic spinal cord injury. Within a few years, a first-of-its-kind 3D-printed spinal cord tissue implant, made from the patient’s own cells, could make that dream come true. Using technology developed over the course of a decade in Prof. Tal Dvir’s regenerative biotechnology lab at Tel Aviv University, the implant enabled paralyzed lab mice to walk again. A paper published today in Advanced Science provides the remarkable details. “It is like science fiction,” says Dr. Asaf Toker, CEO of Matricelf, the company working to bring Dvir’s groundbreaking technology to market. ISRAEL21c readers may recall that two years ago, Dvir’s lab 3D-printed the world’s first miniature vascularized human heart. Dvir and Alon Sinai cofounded Matricelf that year and it went public in 2021. On January 30, the company signed an exclusive global licensing agreement with Tel Aviv University technology transfer company Ramot to commercialize and utilize the patent for 3D-printing tissues and organs. “With our technology, we can create any tissue we want,” Toker tells ISRAEL21c. “The first one is neural implants for people with a spinal cord injury causing paralysis.” No Rejection Dvir explained that the technique begins with taking a small biopsy of belly fat tissue from the patient. “This tissue, like all tissues in our body, consists of cells together with an extracellular matrix of substances like collagens and sugars,” he explained. “After separating the cells from the extracellular matrix, we used genetic engineering to reprogram the cells, reverting them to a state that resembles embryonic stem cells capable of becoming any type of cell in the body.” The extracellular matrix didn’t go to waste. It formed the basis of a personalized hydrogel that will not trigger an immune response or rejection after implantation – which is the main problem with donor implants. “We then encapsulated the stem cells in the hydrogel and, in a process that mimics the embryonic development of the spinal cord, we turned the cells into 3D implants of neuronal networks containing motor neurons,” said Dvir. The human spinal cord implants were then implanted in mice. Half had only recently been paralyzed (the acute model) and half had been paralyzed for the equivalent of a year in human terms (the chronic model). Up and Walking Again Following the implantation and a rapid rehabilitation process, 100 percent of the mice with acute paralysis and 80% of those with chronic paralysis regained their ability to walk. “This is the first instance in the world in which implanted engineered human tissues have generated recovery in an animal model for long-term chronic paralysis – which is the most relevant model for paralysis treatments in humans,” Dvir said. “Individuals injured at a very young age are destined to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives, bearing all the social, financial, and health-related costs of paralysis” because there has never been an effective treatment, Dvir pointed out. “Our goal is to produce personalized spinal cord implants for every paralyzed person, enabling regeneration of the damaged tissue with no risk of rejection.” Following discussions with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Matricelf plans the first human clinical trial of the spinal cord implant at the end of 2024. “Since we are proposing an advanced technology in regenerative medicine, and since at present there is no alternative for paralyzed patients, we have good reason to expect relatively rapid approval of our technology,” said Dvir. In the meantime, additional efficacy and safety trials will be done on lab rats. Printing Tissues and Organs Toker explains what makes this technology unique. “Tissue engineering requires two ingredients: cells and extracellular matrix as a scaffold for the cells to build the tissue,” he says. “Many companies do tissue engineering using synthetic materials for scaffolds or using cells from a donor. But when you introduce foreign material to the body, the immune system attacks it, and the implant fails unless the patient takes drugs to suppress the immune system.” The Matricelf technology developed by Dvir uses autologous (the patient’s own) cells and extracellular matrix. The immune system recognizes them and doesn’t attack them. “The new licensing agreement with Ramot also enables us to 3D-print tissues and organs,” says Toker. “An organ is built from a variety of tissues and cells. So our bioprinter has several bio-ink cartridges to print different tissues in the same printing, just like in four-color printing where the printer knows where to put each color.” The bio-ink is enclosed inside another fluid to support the organ’s structure. “When you print a hollow organ like a heart, if you don’t use this technology the tissue will collapse,” Toker explains. “To print organs with cavities inside them you need the technology to support it. That is our unique aspect.” The spinal implant was developed by Dvir and lab members Lior Wertheim, Dr. Reuven Edri and Dr. Yona Goldshmit along with Prof. Irit Gat-Viks from the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research, Prof. Yaniv Assaf from the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and Dr. Angela Ruban from the Steyer School of Health Professions, all at Tel Aviv University. Matricelf, based in Ness Ziona, employs 10 people – seven of whom are women, Toker tells ISRAEL21c. It is well-positioned to become a prominent player in the 3D bioprinting market, estimated to be worth about $650 million in 2019 and an expected $1.6 billion in 2024. To read the original article click here.

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Israeli Tissue Engineers 3D-Print An Ear

AHA Publisher — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 08:50:16 +0000

Brian Blum via Israel21c – A small percentage (0.1% to 0.3%) of babies are born with congenitally deformed ears. This can have a severe psychological impact, and sometimes involves hearing loss. While surgeons can reconstruct a proper ear using cartilage harvested from the patient’s chest, the procedure is not usually performed until at least 10 years of age. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Sheba Medical Center have developed a way to 3D-print “scaffolding” as the basis for a replacement ear. The scaffold, which allows for the formation of an aesthetic and stable auricle (the visible part of the external ear), is designed from a CT scan of the patient’s ear and can be performed on children as young as six years old. The biodegradable scaffold forms chondrocytes, the cells responsible for cartilage formation, and mesenchymal stem cells. Pores of varying sizes allow for cell attachment to form stable cartilage. The procedure has so far been tested on lab rats. The researchers monitored cartilage formation within the auricle construct in the lab for between 10 days and six weeks before implanting it in the test subjects. The grafted prosthetic ear demonstrated good biomechanical function, the researchers reported in the journal Biofabrication. The project was led by Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion and Dr. Shay Izhak Duvdevani, a senior physician in the Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Department and head of the Tissue Engineering Lab at Sheba Medical Center. The protocols were developed in Levenberg’s lab under Dr. Shira Landau. “One of the challenges in the study was to find a suitable 3D-printing method, since fabricating an ear necessitates the use of biodegradable materials that break down in the body without harming it but have an extremely accurate external structure and small pores,” said Levenberg. “We estimate that it will be possible to tailor our technology to other applications, such as nasal reconstruction and fabrication of various orthopedic implants.” To read the original article click here.

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Tissue Engineering Could Provide Diabetes Cure

AHA Publisher — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 07:00:03 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – A novel approach to treating type 2 diabetes under development at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology uses tissue engineering to create muscle cells that absorb sugar at increased rates. Diabetic mice treated in this manner displayed normal blood sugar levels for months after a single autograft procedure using their own enhanced muscle cells. The tissue-engineering treatment is part of a research study led by Prof. Shulamit Levenberg and PhD Student Rita Beckerman from the Technion’s Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory. “By taking cells from the patient and treating them, we eliminate the risk of rejection,” Levenberg explained. Type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance and cells’ reduced inability to absorb sugar, leading to increased blood-sugar levels. Its long-term complications include heart disease, strokes, retina damage, kidney failure and poor blood flow in the limbs. Although this chronic and common disease can be treated by a combination of lifestyle changes, medication and insulin injections, ultimately it is associated with a 10-year reduction in life expectancy. Currently around 34 million Americans suffer from diabetes, mostly type 2. An effective treatment could significantly improve both quality of life and life expectancy. The same method could also be used to treat various enzyme deficiency disorders. Researchers observed that the engineered muscle cells not only absorbed sugar correctly, improving blood-sugar levels, but also induced improved absorption in the mice’s other muscle cells. ‘ After the procedure, the mice remained diabetes-free for four months – the entire period they remained under observation. Their blood-sugar levels remained lower, and they had reduced levels of fatty liver normally seen in type 2 diabetes. Findings from the study, funded by Rina and Avner Schneur as part of the Rina and Avner Schneur Center for Diabetes Research, were recently published in Science Advances. Other scientists participating in the study are from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; and Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City. To read the original article click here.

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Bio-Printed Blood Vessels Now Possible for Body Implants

AHA Publisher — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 07:00:42 +0000

Abigail Klein Leichman via Israel21c – The science of tissue engineering uses cells and biomolecules combined with scaffolds to repair, replace or regenerate a damaged body part with bio-identical tissue. But when engineered tissues are transplanted into the body, they need a network of blood vessels to function like natural tissues would. The current method is to transplant the engineered tissue first into a healthy limb, allowing the tissue to be permeated by the host’s blood vessels, and then transplanting the structure into the affected area. A breakthrough from researchers led by Technion-Israel Institute of Technology tissue engineering pioneer Prof. Shulamit Levenberg could make that intermediary step unnecessary. As described in Advanced Materials, Levenberg lab member Ariel Alejandro Szklanny 3D-printed a system containing a functional combination of large and small blood vessels. His structure, dubbed VesselNet, was attached to a rat’s femoral artery. Blood flowing through the engineered structure successfully spread through the vessel network, supplying blood to the tissue without leakage. Szklanny’s vascularized tissue constructs incorporate another Israeli innovation: human collagen produced by engineered tobacco plants, from CollPlant. His technique could be used in the future to create personalized blood vessels, of the exact shape necessary, which can be printed and implanted together with implanted tissue engineered from the patient’s own cells, eliminating rejection risk. The study received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. To read the original article click here.

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