Trainee Steering Committee

"3D bioprinting" sounds like something you would see in a science fiction movie, perhaps in "The Fifth Element" where the main character's body is fully printed in a giant bioreactor - bones, muscles and all -  or else in "Starship Troopers" where, more modestly, the technology is shown repairing a wound. Yet, 3D bioprinting (which is exactly what it sounds like - the printing of tissues or organs, by analogy to the more conventional 3D printing using plastic or glass or metal), is, since 10 years or so, an existing technology that, although somewhat experimental still, holds a vast potential to revolutionize [...]

Article reproducedA here from theA UBC Centre for Blood Research.A There is an urgent need for curative therapies to treat kidney failure. In 2015, over 21,000 patients in Canada received dialysis to treat kidney failure. Another 2,500 patients received a kidney transplant and 215 died on the waiting list. As part of an ongoing collaboration, the laboratories of Dr. Kelly M. McNagny (UBC, CBR PI) and Dr. Benjamin S. Freedman (University of Washington) have demonstrated that human kidney organoids grown in a culture dish can accurately model kidney development and disease. This work, recently published in the journal Stem Cells (pictured),A [...]