Validation of neurobioink for 3D printing stem cell-derived neural tissues

塔夫茨药物开发研究中心估计，将一种药物推向市场需要26亿美元和12年的时间。评估治疗中枢神经系统疾病的药物的临床试验有93%失败，每失败一次就会造成约2亿美元的浪费成本。动物疾病模型和身体人体组织是在进入以患者为基础的临床试验之前确定潜在药物靶点的毒性和疗效问题的主要工具。动物模型是目前在临床前阶段评估药物疗效和毒性的标准，需要大量的成本和人力。然而，它们的预测能力并不能直接模仿在人类患者身上观察到的效果。虽然体外培养的人体组织切片提供了略好的预测能力，但它们的供应仍然有限。3D生物打印的神经组织可能作为一种更准确的临床前工具来预测潜在药物靶点的毒性和有效性。这种工程化组织将显著降低临床试验阶段药物失败的可能性，大幅降低药物开发成本。该项目的目标有两个：1)它将验证一种用于打印3D神经组织的新型生物墨水；2)它将开发来自人类诱导多能干细胞(HiPSCs)的生理相关的生物打印神经组织模型。威勒斯博士是国际公认的神经组织工程专家，他为该项目带来了超过16年的生物材料和干细胞生物学经验。该项目将把我们的新知识产权推向市场，同时培训几名高素质的3D生物打印人员。此外，几家公司已经表示有强烈的兴趣将这项工作商业化，我们的支持信中详细说明了这一点。******

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates that it costs $2.6 billion and 12 years to take a pharmaceutical drug to market. Clinical trials evaluating drugs for treating central nervous system disorders fail 93% of the time, causing wasted costs of around $200 million for every failure. Animal disease models and cadaveric human tissues serve as the main tools for identifying toxicity and efficacy issues with potential drug targets before they move into patient-based clinical trials. Animal models are the current standard for evaluating the efficacy and toxicity of drugs at the pre-clinical stage, requiring significant costs and labor. However, their predictive capacity does not directly mimic the effects observed in human patients. While human tissue slices cultured in vitro offer slightly better predictive ability, their supplies remain limited. 3D bioprinted neural tissues can possibly serve as a more accurate pre-clinical tool for predicting the toxicity and efficacy of potential drug targets. Such engineered tissues would significantly reduce the possibility of drug failure at the clinical trial stage, creating a dramatic reduction in the cost of drug development The goal of this project is twofold: 1) it will validate a novel bioink for printing 3D neural tissues and 2) it will develop physiologically relevant bioprinted neural tissue models derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Dr. Willerth, an internationally recognized expert in neural tissue engineering, brings over 16 years of experience in biomaterials and stem cell biology to the project. This project will take our novel intellectual property to market while training several highly qualified personnel in 3D bioprinting. Additionally, several companies have indicated strong interest in commercializing this work as detailed in our letters of support. ******