Russian scientists to bioprint complex tissue on on ISS in September

Russian scientists, together with their colleagues from Israel and the United States, plan to send muscular tissue biomaterials to the International Space Station (ISS) in September for a bioprinting experiment. They will be using 3D Bio’s Organ-Aut bioprinter which was sent up to the ISS late last year.

“In September, we will send muscular tissue cells [to the ISS]. We engage in this project jointly with two labs from US and one from Israel. The Israeli colleagues will share their cattle biomaterials with us. Our US colleagues will provide us with fish biomaterials, extracted from several types of fish,” said Yusef Khesuani, a managing partner at the 3D Bioprinting Solutions biotechnology lab.

Among other scheduled experiments is the printing of bone tissue, due in August. After the planned upgrade of the Organ-Aut bioprinter, scheduled for 2020, the scientists plan to print “tubular structures – renal duct, urethra, blood vessels,” Khesuani said.

The Organ-Aut bioprinter, developed to carry out the world’s first experiment for printing living tissues, was delivered to the space station on December 3, 2018, 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 biotechnical research laboratory, which is a Russian start-up and a subsidiary of the Invitro medical company.