Biomedicine
OCTOBER 2015
Monash University
Words Melissa Marino
B
espoke human body parts “printed” with biological tissue are fast
approaching clinical reality. The key technologies – bioprinting, special
sterilised laboratories or clean rooms, and advanced imaging – have
been brought together in a new collaboration, with the technology set for use as
early as 2016.
This brave new world of biomedicine uses bioprinters, which can produce
replacement tissue for damaged organs, new discs for spinal injuries or multilayered skin for burns victims. New body parts for cancer patients or accident
victims are also on the drawing board.
A partnership between one of Australia’s leading medical research bodies
– Monash University – and Australia’s peak scientific organisation – CSIRO
– will help operate the new $30 million Biomedical Materials Translational
Facility (BMTF), established with funding from Australia’s Science and Industry
Endowment Fund.
The facility has a clear pathways-to-market objective. It will host a
“technology triumvirate” covering a pipeline of biomedical development from start
to finish. Along with the bioprinter, the facility comprises clean rooms that are
purpose-built for biomaterial development and state-of-the-art simultaneous
PET/MRI imaging equipment to analyse the performance of new tissue and
devices in the body and provide real-time diagnostic imaging.
The BMTF will operate across three sites at the university, CSIRO and the
Monash Health Translation Precinct’s new Translational Research Facility. The
Translational Research Facility is a joint initiative between Monash, the Monash
Medical Centre and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research (formerly MIMRPHI). Collaboration with biotechnology companies will ensure the technology
achieves clinical application locally and globally.
Professor Graham Jenkin, deputy director of the Ritchie Centre at the
Hudson Institute of Medical Research, says the technology has the capacity to
develop new body tissue, built up from stem cells, and biomedical materials.
There is also a clear commercial objective.
Professor Jenkin says the three technology platforms complement each
other, beginning with development of biological material in the clean rooms,
producing and replicating it through the printer using blueprints derived from the
imaging technology, and then monitoring its effectiveness and safe performance
in the body with the imaging technology. “These facilities will enable us to rapidly
translate our discoveries into clinical trials,” he says.
Individualised tissue replacement
The technology, worldwide, offers extraordinary advances in human medicine
with Professor Jenkin confident that the production of tissue to repair damaged
organs or printed body parts is not far off.
He explains that the next generation of 3D-printing technology works similarly
to an ink-jet printer, but instead of printing different layers of colour, it prints
different matrices combined with different types of stem cells to produce types
of tissue fitting a particular set of specifications. The specifications required, for
example, to customise tissue for an individual patient, would be provided through
the imaging technology.
“Take, for example, someone who has cancer of the nose,” he says.
“You can take an image of a specific segment of tissue, make a blueprint
through a 3D computer-aided design drawing, and reproduce it on the bioprinter
with the matrix and stem cells. Surgeons would then use this to replace the
damaged tissue.”
PET/MRI Positron emission tomography (PET) scans and magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) scans are body-imaging tests. A PET scan reveals the metabolic state of the
body’s organs and tissue performance. An MRI scan shows the size, appearance and
function of organs and muscles in the body. The ability to combine the two scans into a
single procedure is only a recent development.
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In its initial application, the PET/MRI imaging equipment will be used largely
to analyse the effectiveness of new tissue or devices in the body. The
simultaneous capability of the scanner will greatly enhance the progress of
scientific trials, says Monash Biomedical Imaging (MBI) director Professor Gary
Egan, who will oversee the technology.
“Imaging is the endgame for the product development,” Professor Egan
says. “By combining PET and MRI into the one scan we can get answers to our
questions simultaneously and make comparisons between metabolism, function
and structure.”
This is because the dual-mode technology reveals the organ or tissue
metabolism through the PET scan while pinpointing exactly where in the body
this is taking place and the functional integration through MRI. Without an MRI,
which creates a detailed image of the body, researchers cannot as easily detect
the exact location of “hotspots” revealed by the PET scan that might indicate
tumours or inflammation.
Previously, researchers may have had to use surgery or remove tissue from
the body to acquire this information. The new technology means ongoing noninvasive monitoring, providing consistent information over time. It will also save
time in human clinical trials where previously two separate images had to be
taken individually and compared side by side.
“We can track, for example, the proliferation of stem cells aggregating at an
injury site to see if an implant is working,” Professor Egan says.
Professor Egan is planning to use the dual scanner in several projects
including one with Professor John McNeil, head of the Monash School of Public
Health and Preventive Medicine, looking at amyloid deposition in the brain and its
relationship to the onset of dementia.
Professor Egan says the technology platforms across the entire new
biomedical engineering precinct are designed to attract partners – particularly
biotech companies – who may wish to tap these resources to advance their own
technologies and treatments.
“There is, for example, CSIRO with the laboratories and the materialsscience expertise, the bioprinting facilities at the translation precinct where the
Hudson Institute researchers and others work with stem cells and therapeutic
interventions, and here at MBI we have the imaging facilities to track these things
dynamically,” he says.