MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/. Russian scientists’ cooperation with US and European colleagues will help sophisticate the experiment for printing micro-organs on the International Space Station (ISS), Managing Partner of 3D Bioprinting Solutions Laboratory Yusef Khesuani told TASS on Tuesday.
Russian researchers are currently acquainting their foreign colleagues with the results of the world’s first experiment for printing the living tissues of the mice’s thyroid gland and human cartilage with the help of the Organ-Avt space bioprinter.
"Now we are informing our foreign colleagues about what we succeeded to do during the first experiment on the ISS. We are telling them about our bioprinter and other things so that they can understand what infrastructure we already have. We have drawn up several projects, which we have submitted for their study and which describe the operations where we can join efforts, proceeding from their infrastructure," Khesuani said.
Further on, the bio-printing experiment can be sophisticated and divided by segments on the ISS as part of international scientific cooperation, he said.
"In particular, if we talk about improving the system of delivering the tissues obtained to the Earth for subsequent transplant experiments, bioreactors are needed," he added.
"The idea is as follows: we deliver materials to the Russian segment and conduct the first part of the experiment there: printing micro-organs and then transferring the samples to American colleagues so that they use bioreactors and complete growing these micro-organs before the return to Earth," the scientist explained.
In December 2018, the world’s first experiment was conducted on the orbital outpost for the printing of living tissues using the Organ-Avt bioprinter developed by Invitro. At that time, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko printed the tissues of the mice’s thyroid gland and human cartilage on the space station.
Organ-Avt bioprinter
The Organ-Avt bioprinter developed to carry out the world’s first experiment for printing living tissues was delivered to the space station on December 3 aboard the manned Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft.
The magnetic 3D-bioprinter has been devised to grow living tissues and eventually organs and it can also be used to study the influence of outer space conditions on living organisms during lengthy flights.
The experiment has been devised by 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a bio-technical research laboratory, which is a Russian start-up and a subsidiary of Invitro company.
The plans to deliver the bioprinter’s first copy failed after the aborted launch of the Soyuz-FG booster with the manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft from the Baikonur spaceport on October 11.
The biological samples were delivered back to Earth aboard the manned Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft on December 20.