stem cell breast augmentation uk clinics

welcome everybody.today i’m going to talk to you about biofabrication and the role that this plays in the futureof regenerative medicine. i work at the institute of health and biomedicalinnovation which is over at kelvin grove and i together work with a wide range of researcherswho are working together closely to deliver real world solutions to a range of very importanthealth issues. one of the technologies that we’re developingover there is a technology called biofabrication. now this is an additive manufacturing techniqueor a 3d printing technique that enables us to create biologically relevant customisedtissue substitutes. so really the vision we have within our groupis to create anatomically precise, customised

patient specific tissue replacements to treatpatients who are suffering large amounts of tissue loss, and i’ll talk a bit more aboutthis as i go through my presentation. so i’m going to jump straight into a clinicalcase for you here. as you can see we have an example of a largepelvic tumour where the arrows pointing here. an mri image here shows you that you’vegot this turmeric growth and obviously the surgeon is required to excise this from thepatient in order for them to survive. the way that this is treated is usually witha custom made mega-prosthesis so the surgeon has resected the pelvis, they’ve removedthe tumour and the surrounding bone. this is to ensure you have a tumour-free margin.so you take out the tumour and you have to

ensure you’ve taken away all of the surroundingtissue as well to enable, to prevent any more counter-spreading after the issue and thisis a better patient oncologic outcome. however, if we look at this example here wecan see that we can use customised 3d printed models and implants moving into the futureas an alternative treatment for this kind of condition.so we have a tumour present here, in the iliac crest, there’s a large amount of bone losshere and the ct scan can reveal that bone loss.so what happens next is we can use a 3d model to create, effectively just a 3d model thatexactly emulates the type of tissue that’s lost from the patient and the surgeon is thenafforded the possibility to be able to work

with this model and it gives them visual perceptionduring surgery and they really have the ability to able to see what’s wrong with the tissueand they don’t have to go into the patient immediately to be able to see this.we can then use modelling to look at the resection area, and we can create a 3d printed versionof this. the next step is a customisation of a scaffoldto fit the model virtually and to also create a 3d model of this case.so here we have the actual tumour, this is what it looks like when it’s been resected.and here’s an example of the actual scaffold that’s 3d printed to fit into that tissuein order to regenerate and heal that tissue loss.and here’s an example of what the customised

3d printing tissue scaffold looks like.so really the benefits of 3d printing in biofabrication in this kind of context is two-fold.so you have a 3d printed model that the surgeon can use to enable them to visualise the problem,but you also have a 3d printed customised replacement scaffold to actually regeneratethe tissue. now one thing to take note of here is ourscaffolds are made of resolvable polymers, so in the previous case you saw there wasa large metallic implant that was put into that patient and these can cause quite a lotof problems in the future for that patient should they go through an airport metal detectoror if they have any more medical image scanning and that metallic implant is very difficultto take out should there be any future complications.

in this case we create a 3d printed scaffoldusing a resolvable polymer, and this polymer slowly dissolves over time when you implantit back into the patient and the patient’s own tissue can take over the function of thatscaffold, can heal the bone, and eventually you’re left with no implant whatsoever.so it’s a really future looking view to enable us to heal these defect sites.so let’s a talk a bit about additive manufacturing and how this process enables us to work towardsbiofabricating patient specific implants. so what is additive manufacturing?well it’s really an umbrella term and it groups together lots of technologies thatcreate 3d objects using an additive manufacturing technique, so really a layer by layer approach.there are many different perspectives regarding

this kind of technology.enthusiasts, such as myself, believe this is a great opportunity to revolutionise themanufacturing industry and the markets that they serve.there’s also quite a few people who believe that there’s not been a tremendous impactof this technology other than in very few sort of successful niches.and also there’s some application concerns, when you consider that it’s actually possibleto 3d print guns. however, on balance, all of these views havesome merit. one thing is definitely for sure, and that’sthat additive manufacturing is a really important technical innovation it dates back about 3decades, however the strategic relevance is

only really sharply rising in the currentclimate. so it’s really exploded into the publicconsciousness with regard to how important additive manufacturing and biofabricationreally can be. so what if we could change lives with thistechnology? what if it were possible if a child had anaccident on the side of the road, they’ve smashed their skull open and we could takethem into hospital and we could 3d print them a replacement skull.what if older patients who are suffering degenerative osteoarthritic conditions could be treatedwith 3d printed cartilage substitutes in order to heal that defected tissue to improve theirquality of life?

and what if we could save lives?for example, with organ printing. i just want to ask you a question, which iswhen you think about biofabrication and when you think about 3d printing, how many of youenvisage this kind of scenario here? i take it a few of you.ok so i just want to spend a couple of minutes talking about how realistic this is.is this realistic? it’s really not particularly realistic andthis kind of image is a little bit frustrating for some of us tissue engineers out therewho believe that it’s sort of leading the public to believe that one day we’re goingto be able to print on the spot, a heart, a liver, some lungs and really we’re movingtowards great technological advancements in

this area, but being able to print a biologicallyfunctional tissue on the spot is possibly never ever going to happen.however, what we can do is we can create organ substitutes.so what we can do is we can use additive manufacturing techniques to create a scaffold, a 3d structure,using special bio materials that emulate the type of tissue that you’re trying to form.and we can print cells into that structure, so biologically relevant cells so bone cellsif you’re trying to heal bone, cartilage if you want to heal cartilage, blood vesseland ethereal cells if you want to get a blood vessel supply within that structure.when these cells start to polyterate, and they start to lay down new bone matrix orcartilage matrix around themselves, that’s

when they start to form the new tissue.and that’s when they start to develop a 3 dimensional biologically function and tissuewhich is impossible to actually do on the spot.so on the spot 3d printing of whole organs is maybe a slightly misleading view of biofabrication.however we are moving towards being able to heal quite simple tissue, such as bone andcartilage and one day we will be able to print cells into these structures, we can alreadydo this. we can place them into bioreactors we canplace them back into the patient and eventually that organ structure that tissue, will beable to regenerate. but it will not be simply an on the spot solution.so let’s talk about 3d printing for a moment.

it’s a rapid technique.here you can see a small toy rocket being printed.you can use almost any material for this kind of approach, and you can do it on almost anyscale. so this is a beautiful example of 3d houseprinting. so these are layer upon layer of concreteblocks that have been used in china to develop very cost efficient housing for the localpopulation. each of these houses is able to be printedat approximately $5000 and they can make up to 10 per day.so it’s really 3d printing additive manufacturing, it’s really revolutionising many differentindustries.

it’s also very fashionable.i absolutely love this slide because it just shows the amazing creativity that you canout into this type of design process when you’re creating these 3d structures.so we have dresses we have shoes we have accessories and you can really look at the kind of detailthat’s afforded with this technique. here an example of a 3d printed catwalk dress,that’s on the catwalks of paris at the moment and again this is a wonderful way to justvisualise the typography, the detail, the complexity, the colours, the types of materialsthat are used to create these kind of outfits. and this slide just demonstrates beautifullyhow you can create it to be anatomically precise to fit the contours of somebody’s body.so it’s not very difficult to imagine that

it’s pretty easy to then translate thatto making a transplantable material that can go on the inside of the body.so biofabrication, what’s our motivation? why are we even doing this?well, i’m going to show you a few numbers now, i’ve been told not to call them statistics.but if we consider injured or damaged tissues or organs, and large cases of tissue loss,you can see here that millions of people every year suffer from congenital birth defects.so an example of this is clef palate, where during the development the child’s roofof the mouth has not developed properly. and millions of people suffer this kind ofloss of tissue every year when they’re born. also, many millions of people lose their livesto cancer, and millions of people are affected

by this.so obviously, breast mastectomy’s where you have to have your breasts removed, orpotentially osteosarcoma cases like this where you can see there’s a large tumour on thebone and you have to take all of that tumour out.just like the example i showed you earlier on with the pelvis.so these cases lead to enormous amounts of tissue loss.how do we heal that tissue? how do we regenerate that tissue?also, possibility a little bit more common, most of you have probably experienced this.traumatic accidents. millions of people lose their lives or areaffected by traumatic accidents every single

year.michael schumacher is a good example of this. also sporting injuries where the skeleton’sshattered, the skin’s torn off and the muscles are damaged beyond repair.how do we heal this? how do we prevent these people suffering?well we do this by passionate, collaborative research.we develop new techniques, and we develop new technologies and we really try to enablethe team to create these custom replacement tissues and organs.and these are tailored to the individual patient. and it may sound like science fiction to you,but we really believe that this is a future reality for where this technology is heading.so i want to focus a little bit now on who

we are, what we do and how we’re going toget there. so we have a wide range of scientists workingon these problems with a huge range of expertise. we have biologists, we have chemists, we havephysicists, we have mathematics, we have computer programmers, we have software designers, engineersand clinicians. and really the spark of our vision that drivesus to want to do this research is the ability to blow down those walls between those individualdiscipline areas. we have to come together collectively, wehave to work together to solve these problems, engineering problems, clinical problems.you cannot have a doctor in a hospital working on these problems in isolation.you can’t have a physicist number crunching

and a biologist whose culturing cells.you have to get together to really be able to form multidisciplinary teams to reallymeet these medical challenges. so i just want to talk now about a few biofabricationshowcases, specifically here at qut. so first of all let’s talk about cartilagerepair. so osteoarthritis sufferers, for example.so we have, here’s one i made earlier, associate professor travis klein is working on developingbioinks to print cartilage for patients suffering from osteoarthritis and i’m just going topresent a little bit of his work today. so he’s developing different types of hydrogels,which enable you to put cartilage cells into the hydrogels and to print 3 dimensional structures.so here’s two different types of hydrogels

that he’s using.a hydrogel’s sort of mid-way between a liquid and a solid.it enables you to get a fluidity when you’re printing these models, you all problem knowthat cartilage isn’t like skin or bone, it’s got a hydrogel sort of complexity toit. so we can print these 3d structures and thenwe look at the types of proteins that are expressed within their structures when youput cartilage cells into those hydrogels and you print them.and it’s very important that you get the right types of molecules expressed, type 2collagen has been expressed quite strongly in these hydrogels here.type 1 collagen would mean that you are forming

biome.so we really have to make sure that we’re creating the right kind of biological tissuesubstitutes. also mechanics are very important.so you can imagine you’re articulating cartilage surfaces undergo a lot of pressure, so it’svery important that when we’re developing our new hydrogels and bio materials, thatwe get the correct compressive modulist for example.so we need to make sure that the bio materials that we’re developing, that we’re printing,are the same as the native tissue or as close to as we can manage in the laboratory.i now want to talk a little bit about some of the fantastic breast tissue engineeringresearch that’s going on here as well.

breast cancer is a major cause of illnessfor women all over the world, and about 24% of all reported cases lead to the need forsurgery. the most common techniques for this are lumpectomyand mastectomy. so over at ihbi, we have our chairman of progressivemedicine, professor dietmar hutmacher with us today in the audience, and he’s reallydeveloping this fantastic breast engineering concept.so the concept goes like this. prior to the mastectomy, the patient has ascan of their body. we can then use cad modelling to be able torecreate the exact size and shape of the breast pre-mastectomy.we can then use 3d printing to create the

scaffold, and we can extract cells from thepatient. so we can take endothelial cells and fat tissuewe can culture this in the scaffold and we can implant that back into the patient.so this is just a little animation that shows you how this is predicted to work.so initially you take a scan of the tissue you’re hoping to heal prior to the mastectomy,and this 3d scaffold is then implanted back into the patient.at the same time during the same procedure a liposuction procedure can be used to extractfrom the abdomen, fat cells. so this effectively a waste tissue and manypeople might go for liposuction and this tissue gets thrown away.it’s not a tissue that anybody wants to

keep.in actual fact you can use it, you can treat it properly and you can turn it into the righttype of tissue with the right induction. so we can implant this into the scaffold materialand we can look towards regenerating breast tissue.i also want to talk a little bit about some of the more advanced technology at qut whichis customised bone repair. so this is really close to my heart, thisis what i’ve been working on for quite a while.it’s to create skeletal implants, where you’ve had traumatic accidents or perhapsa tumour excision from the pelvis maybe during a sporting injury.so again here are some examples of where you

might have a really nasty fracture and oftenplates and screws are implanted into the body which are permanent and they’re not alwaysthe best solution. it could also happen, a traumatic accidentjust at home, you may fall off a step ladder you may slip over in the garden.these are very very common injuries and when you fracture a bone and a large part of thatbone is missing it’s really hard to be able to heal that injury.so here’s just an example of what might happen to someone if they’ve had a suspectedhead injury for example. so let’s imagine that you’ve been at home,you’re in the shed and you’ve had a large box fall onto your head and you’re not reallysure what the problem is.

you can’t obviously see that you’ve gotthis defected tissue site, but you’re really got a concussion and you’ve been knockedout. so what usually happens next is we have hospitaladmission and the patient will undergo medical imaging.how many people have had an mri scan or a ct scan?this is the first step that usually happens when we’re not quite sure what’s wrongor what’s been damaged. so the patient is in hospital and they’rehaving medical imaging. this is really a way to be able to recreatethe structure of the body, so usually the skeleton, to see what kind of tissue is defected.so in this case we’ve got a really large

chunk missing from our head.so we can scan that defected tissue area and we can create a 3d model of that defectedtissue. so a 3d model of that injury site.we can really make it emulate the exact structure of the bone that is present based on the bonethat’s already there in the head and the adjacent tissue and we can create these 3dmaps, these 3d structures. we can feed those into our computer programsand use algorithms to talk to our 3d printing machines and we can tell our 3d printing machineseffectively, to build a scaffold that exactly emulates that defect site.so we can make anatomically precise, customised, sterile scaffolds to fit that defect site.so here’s an example, it’s a schematic

illustration but it shows you basically howthis layer by layer approach builds up these implants.this particular case is using ultra-thin fibre networks.so i should mention some of the technology that we’re working on is using melt electrospinning which effectively each of the strands of this scaffold is around 50 microns, nowthat’s half the size of your hair. you may wonder why we’re using that typeof structure and the reason we’re doing that is because it really emulates the tissuein your body. so it’s much closer to the collagen fibresin your body look like. it’s a much higher surface area for cellsto attach to, and to start to lay down new

bone, new cartilage, new tissue within thatmatrix. it’s also really important here to talkabout the types of materials we’re using. we’re not printing these out of concrete;we’re not making little orange rockets. we’re making bio compatible, fda approvedscaffolds that are able to be implanted directly into the patient.for example resolvable sutures, you’ve probably all had sutures when you’re had an operationat hospital. so we can use the same kind of materials tomake these scaffolds from and they’re dissolvable. so as i talked to you before, it’s reallyimportant that when you’re using polymeric implants that we give them a chance to dissolveover time.

so we can tailor the chemistry, dependingon how serious the injury is, to degrade over a certain period of time.we can make them mechanically strong when you first implant them, and then slowly byhydrolysis, which means the water molecules break down that polymer network we can startto degrade these scaffolds over time. i’ll talk a little bit in a minute abouthow the cells will play a role in that as well.so once we’ve started to print our 3d scaffolds in our 3d bio printer, in our biofabricationequipment, we can precisely place bio inks into that structure.so this might be cartilage cells for example it could be growth factors, these are factorsthat we can apply to different tissues to

stimulate either new bone growth, new cartilagegrowth, new blood vessel growth. we can actually put those directly into thescaffold depending on what type of tissue we’re trying to heal.we can use different types of growth factors in skin scaffolds we can use bone morphogeneticproteins to heal bone, we can use different types of cartilage cells for healing cartilage.so really the material can be selected based upon what kind of tissue you’re trying toheal and also the growth factors in the cells can be selected based upon what type of tissueyou’re trying to heal. so we have this layer by layer process withthe bio inks, with the cells, with the growth factors and with that scaffold.so let’s have a look inside that scaffold

let’s zoom into that.again pay note to the scale bar here, its 50 microns these strands of these scaffoldsare very very small and the sizes of the cells are approximately 20 microns.so you can see there’s a huge surface area inside this scaffold, this 3 dimensional scaffold.the cells start to attach to that scaffold, they start to feel that it’s similar totheir native environment and they start to proliferate.they grow they multiply, they start to fill a lot those pores between the scaffold structsand as they start to do that, they being to lay down extracellular matrix.they start to encompass themselves in new bone tissue and they really start to recreatethat bone environment in this case well we’re

healing the skull defect, and it’s an anatomicalprecise size and shape based on the scaffold of the defected tissue.so prior to that happening, because this takes many many weeks the proliferation of the cells,but once we’ve seeded the cells into the scaffold on the spot we can implant that backinto the patient. and it’s the perfect anatomical fit.so i’m just going to talk through a couple of preclinical studies that we’ve alreadyundertaken in various groups around queensland. and so i’m going to talk about 3d printedscaffolds and how we’ve already used those to heal preclinical bone defects.so this is an example of healing a skull defect in a preclinical model.we extracted bone marrow cells from the iliac

crest; we cultured those for two weeks.we made a 3d printed scaffold which was quite large.you can this is quite a large defect here based on this scale bar.we implanted the scaffold we implanted the cells into that defect site just to see howwell we could heal that bone. here’s an example of the histology of thatkind of implantation. so histology is effectively the study of tissue,so when we’ve implanted these scaffolds we really want to know if we’re formingthe right kind of tissue. we want to make sure we’re forming bone,and we want to make sure we’re not forming fibrous tissue or skin within that defect.so we take out the scaffold and we take very

thin slices of that tissue, approximately5 micron thick and we apply special dyes that bind to specific substances within that structureand tell us whether it’s bone or not. in this case, the black area is bone.if we focus in you can see these circular areas here and you can see this pattern.does anybody know what that could be? my group’s here so they all know what itis. chris?so what chris was just saying there was this sort of symmetrical pattern you can see here,this is where the scaffold is still present in that defect site.this was implanted for 2 years to heal the tissue, but we used a very slow resolvingpolymer, we used polycaprolactone and this

dissolves over many years.so you can effectively see that it’s still in place.you can see that the scaffold has started dissolving slowly and the reason we can seethat is because you’ve got this area here around the structs, which is actively mineralisingbone, it’s instead it’s got huge amounts of osteoid blasts present there.they’re slowly mineralising and they’re filling the pores.the scaffolds still there its slowly dissolving and mineralising some more and its reallystarting to fill that entire scaffold structure. so all of the black area is mineralised tissuein the pores, and the blue area here is where the bone is mineralising towards those scaffoldstructs as the scaffold is starting to dissolve.

thank you chris.my favourite topic is histology so i’m going to show a little bit of how we can see thatthe kind of tissue that were forming inside this scaffold really is real tissue, is itphysiologically relevant? so this is taken from the inside of scaffoldsthat we’ve used for two years in an implantation model just to look at what kind of structureswere forming. here we have a beautiful blood vessel whichis exactly what you need in order to feed the bone cells to let them grow and proliferateto flush away all the waste products and to bring in all the nutrients into the defectsite. and you can see this beautiful pattern ofosteocytes which a mature bone cells that

are orientating themselves around the bloodvessels. and this is so that they can get the nutrientsfrom the blood vessels to survive to be able to create new bone and to be able to basicallyfill that scaffold with new structures. this is an example of an sem, scanning electronmicroscopy, you can see you’ve got this central blood vessel and again all of thebone cells orientated around there and this is just a schematic from any old textbookon bone that shows you that this osteon structure here has this central blood vessel and theorientation of the cells. so it’s very important that we can demonstratethat we’ve actually got proper biologically functional bone within the scaffolds.and also this is a fantastic example of what

these mature bone cells looks like withinthat scaffold. they’re called osteocytes as i describedbefore, and they’re holding hands, they’re talking to one another, they’re communicating.they’re telling each other we’re in the right environment here let’s mineralise,let’s form new tissue and i really love this picture it’s just a beautiful exampleof biology at its best. moving on from quite a simple defect to healwhich is a skull defect which is not load bearing, we’ve also done a lot of work atqut particularly dietmar hutmacher, looking at healing tibial defect so long bone defects,these are obviously under a lot of load. here we can see we’ve 3d printed a solingicalscaffold, which fits into a solingical defect

that you can see here.so 3 centimetres. this is an x-ray of what the defect lookslike, with a big gap here which is where the scaffold gets implanted into, this is justsome of our results from a paper that was published quite recently.this column here shows what it looks like when you do not put any kind of intervention,any kind of scaffold, any kind of autograph, anything into that defect site.you don’t get any bone healing. this group’s a really important group toinclude in the study because we need to demonstrate that if we do not intervene in this kind ofinjury, in this kind of segmental bone site, which many people suffer when they have sportinginjuries, it simply won’t heal.

so we need to have a solution to this.this one here shows beautiful bridging all the way through, this is a ct scan so thisis the kind of scan you’ll get in a hospital. this is a micro ct scan so you get a littlebit more detail on the mineral deposition. and this is histology.so you can see that the black area here is bone bridging, all the way through the defect.now an autograph is a gold standard treatment in the clinic.you can see from this image here it worked really well.has anyone had an autograph procedure before? wow, no?ok. well what happens in an autograph as the nameimplies is a graft is taken from the same

person.so if you’re going to hospital with a huge chunk of your leg missing, they will drillinto your pelvis, they’ll take a big chunk of bone out and they’ll implant it in yourleg. so instead of going in with a limp on oneleg you come out limping on both legs because you’ve got a huge secondary operation sitehere. it works very well it does heal the bone butyou can imagine that if your defect site in your leg is so large you just cannot takeenough bone from your pelvis to be able to implant back into that defect site.so this is what drives biofabrication this is what drives the need to make 3d printedscaffolds, because we can make scaffolds of

any shape or size and we can heal these defectsbased on the anatomy of the fractured bone and the autograph is just not sufficient whenthe defect sites are so large. here we can see what it looks like when you’vejust implanted the scaffold by itself you can see that the bone is not bridged.and here is an example of one of our tissue engineering solutions which is to use a scaffold,a bioactive scaffold, and to include a growth factor in there that stimulates new bone formation.so bone morphogenic protein is clinically used, its approved to be used in the clinicfor spinal fusion, for long bone defects, for orbital floor surgery and we know thatit works very well and the clinicians use this.but they use it on like a little collagen

sponge that isn’t very strong so we’redeveloping technologies to be able to add it to much more mechanically robust scaffolds,we apply those to the scaffolds, we implant them and this is the results that we’regetting. so it’s just as good as the autograph. sowe’ve already developed a new tissue engineering solution for healing long bone defects.so how do we translate this hype, this research hype into patient hope?let’s look for a moment at one of these gartner hype cycles.sorry, the headings the wrong way around. if you look at the top of this here you cansee that 3d printing is a really exciting area at the moment.it’s at the top of the peak of expectations,

everybody’s raving about it.but this isn’t the most important or the most exciting part of this curve.if you look down here at these emerging technologies, these are much more exciting to us and 3dprinting has been identified, 3d bio printing, biofabrication has been identified as an emergingtechnology and this is accepted all over the world as a new and exciting emerging technologyin additive manufacturing. so speaking about australia in general, howshould we be positioning ourselves in the additive manufacturing arena?i have a couple of quotes here from a paper that was written by morgan stanley and theyreally say that the improvements in printers and the growing portfolio of materials availableare making this 3d additive manufacturing

technology much more relevant and exciting.and also it’s very interesting to consider that 40% of the pattern applications in theadditive manufacturing area are in the areas of biofabrication, so in the medical technologyspace. so these are very interesting facts. australiahas a really important role in traditional additive manufacturing industries.but perhaps it shouldn’t be competing in established industrial markets, such as thecar and the shipping and the aerospace industry, which are really a little bit further behindcountries such as germany, such as china and india.we really have an opportunity here to be able to revive the additive manufacturing industryin australia to the creation of world leading

biofabrication niches with substantial patientbenefits and substantial manufacturing benefits. so how can we drive innovation and cost savingsfrom a patient’s point of view in biofabrication with medical technology?well the first things that benefit the patients are the diagnostics and the therapy choice.so we can use digital imaging and we can use 3d printing to give models to the physiciansto assist them in actually diagnosing the issue and diagnosing the disease.so just taking you back to this example, which is a prime example of this, you’ve got your3d models that the physician can actually handle, they can print them on the spot basedon the patient scan data and we can also make scaffolds that we implant into the patient.so it’s a two-fold benefit.

also the ability to make 3d custom patientspecific implants or even entirely new options such as new organs one day are also tremendouspatient benefits. what about manufacturer benefits?so we have an opportunity with the biofabrication with medical technology to create low volumebut very very high value products. also one of the most interesting things thati’ve been hearing about recently is the reduced inventory.so when you consider that currently products are stored in warehouses, they’re storedin the store cupboards in shops, we have the ability to make just in time solutions, onthe spot solutions. so you’re effectively taking an entire warehouseand you’re condensing it into a 3d printer

in your office, in your business, where everit is. and you’re reducing the costs associatedwith having to store all of these products that you then have to implant into the patient.so it’s really reducing that tremendously. you also reduce waste and you reduce assembly.there’s also that wonderful opportunity for incredible creativity with the designcomplexity. so you don’t have to be medical associatedto be designing these implants. you can be from the creative industries, youcan be a dress designer, you can really translate these skills into this amazing emerging market.there’s also an enormous amount of growth opportunities.so there’s certainly an increased need for

3d printing and biofabrication skills in australiaand all over the world and here’s just a few example of some current media, some papersand some current media. i’m not going to go through them too extensivelybut you can see at the university of wollongong it’s saying that aussie experts are closerto making body parts, they’re also 3d printing stem cells in edinburgh, and they’re makingcartilage with hybrid printers according to the bbc.so australia really is home to very innovative technical universities and we are really poisedto be able to transform the additive manufacturing industry to deliver medical and economic success.and i just want to give you a really small example now of how qut is moving forward inthis area in order to launch an educational

program so its underpinned by very strongeducation and research programs and we’re partnering with leading european universities.so this year it will start next year but this year we launched the world’s first doublemaster’s program in biofabrication. and this is a partnership between the queenslanduniversity of technology and the university of wollongong and we’re partnering withthe university of wurzburg in germany and the university medical centre utrecht in holland.and this is how it’s designed. so we have 10 students per year at qut and10 at the university of wollongong and they undertake a year of education and researchin the area of biofabrication and then in the second year they will be sent to theseeuropean universities and they will have their

second year of research there.and in return we will receive students from europe into our research programs over here.it’s supported by the commonwealth of australia and also the eu and it’s a really wonderfulopportunity. okay, so thinking about the future of biofabricationand what we’ve just discussed here, i really want you to shake this idea of 3d printinghearts on the spot because that’s not really what we’re about.we’re about developing technologies, we’re about sort of making incremental progressin terms of healing bone, healing cartilage, being able to create organ structures, putthem into bioreactors and then potentially implant those into patients.so i just want you to shake this idea from

your mind at the moment.so one thing that we’re really focusing on very hard at the moment is new design concepts,so we design our 3d printers as well as just utilising the scaffolds that they produce.so here’s just one example from our institute with regard to developing new technologies.so we’ve built our own 3d printer so we can afford sterility within the environment,humidity control, temperature controls, we can print bio inks, we can add resolvablescaffolds into that process and we have a wide range of engineers, programmers, physicists,mathematicians, all kinds of people working on this technology.we’re actually building these printers in house now and it’s really really excitingfor us and its part of our huge passion over

at ihbi.so, final slide. the hospital of the future.so this is really looking to the future and what we’re hoping will be achieved frombiofabrication. so a patient will be admitted to hospital.here’s our example of the hospital of the future.they’ll undergo a patient scan as i described before, and we hope that every single hospitalin the country will have a 3d printer there in the operating theatre.you’ll be able to create customised, sterile, on the spot, anatomically precise scaffoldsof any type of tissue dependent on what kind of material you’re printing with.we can use this to heal bone, cartilage, muscle,

blood vessel, multiple tissue types and ultimatelyorgans. these will be implanted, in situ, in the patientin the operating theatre and the patient will be able to come out of hospital hopefullymuch much sooner and will not have a secondary site of surgery from an autograph and thiswill be a cheap, cost effective, on the spot solution.so i really hope that i’ve convinced some of you about biofabrication and its role inthe future of regenerative medicine today, because we’re excited about the technologyand we believe that it plays a pinnacle role in the additive manufacturing future for australia.i just very quickly want to put my most important slide up which is my acknowledgements slide.so first of all the funding from the arc and

the nhmrc which is enabling this work to beongoing, and also collaborators such as dietmar hutmacher and the regenerative medicine group,travis klein and the cartilage regeneration laboratory, and also the amazing biomaterialsand tissue morphology group. and i particularly want to point out seanwhose really been, whose here today and he’s getting embarrassed, whose helped me put togethersome of these wonderful animations for this slide show.it’s very important that you have strong teams, it’s very important that you acknowledgethe participation of these strong teams. last of all i just really want to thanks ianfor giving me the opportunity to come today to talk about this biofabrication and thetechnology and the future.

so thank you and thank you to everyone forlistening.