Humanity is on the verge of a revolutionary event that will overturn our ideas about the world. There will be no more cripples and disabled children on Earth. For people affected by wars, car accidents and disease, spare organs will be printed on 3D bioprinters. This is not science fiction. The exact date of the beginning of a new era is already known.
The world's first living organ will be printed in Russia on March 15, 2015. This was stated by Vladimir Mironov, head of the Russian laboratory of biotechnological research "3D Bioprinting Solutions", professor at the University of Virginia (USA). The author of the sensation told Komsomolskaya Pravda about the fantastic possibilities of the new technology.
WHY DO WE NOT PRINT WOMEN'S BREAST
Vladimir Alexandrovich, you so confidently call March 15, why did you choose this date?
- Everything is very simple. We make ourselves an annual schedule. For this year, we planned to make the world's best 3D bioprinter. We made it. The following year, the task was to print the organ as a living organ and publish an article in a scientific journal to stake out the right to priority. And then there is naked mathematics. It takes six months to test a printed organ on a living organism. It will take another 3 months to prepare the article. We subtract 9 months from December - it turns out March.
And why exactly on March 15?
- I spoke at a meeting on new technologies chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. My proposals for the use of bioprinting in healthcare were accepted and asked to issue them in time for March 15th. And I told mine: “Guys, there are enough balabols in the country. If you want to be perceived as serious people, you need to go to the podium on March 15 and show the product with your face. The public always needs you to pull the rabbit out of the top hat, then they will believe you.
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Which organ will be published first?
- I was asked the same question in the summer at the first world bioprinting congress in Singapore. I replied: "I won't say, wait a year!" In the hall they are screaming: "Will this be a woman's breast ?!" Well, a scientist can successfully engage in such things as female breasts in his free time from scientific work. We thought for a long time and had to stop at the thyroid gland. Because it is a very simple organ: on the one hand, the arterial entrance, on the other, the venous exit, between them there is cellular tissue. Here it is for two smoke breaks. The most difficult thing is to prove the function in a living organism.
On a person?
- To begin with, it will be a mouse. We figured out how to do it. It is necessary, as in Chernobyl, to cut out the thyroid gland with the help of radioactive iodine. As a result, the level of hormones in the body drops. Then we transplant our printed design, if the level of hormones is restored, then this moment is heard: "Bang!" and a champagne cork flies into the ceiling of the laboratory.
WHO IS LAST IN LINE FOR THE NOBEL?
It seemed that you spoke with some degree of disappointment about the thyroid gland. And what organs are most tempting to do?
- Of course, the kidney! For her, they have already given the Nobel Prize to a surgeon who in 1954 transplanted a living kidney to a patient from a twin brother. Today, whoever prints a kidney first and successfully transplants it to a patient who manages to stay alive, this person will definitely become a Nobel laureate. The second point is commercial prospects. Who is dying of thyroid disease now? Take your pills and everything will be fine. There is no market. But a huge number of people in the world die every day from kidney disease!
In China alone, 1.5 million people (according to the Chinese Ministry of Health) are waiting for a donor kidney transplant. The need is met by 1 percent. This means that the rest are either on hemodialysis, which costs a lot of money - 4 times more expensive than a kidney transplant. Or they just die in line. And now - attention: on the black market, a kidney costs from 200 to 250 thousand dollars. Multiply 1.5 million by 250 thousand dollars, and you get not billions - trillions of dollars! And this is only in China. The sick will be happy: they will return to a fulfilling life. Health care is happy: they spend 4 times less money on patients! And most importantly, a new industry will emerge - organ factories. This is more or less similar to the 21st century.
My head does not fit how you can print a kidney …
- It's not the most difficult thing. It will be difficult to get permission for her transplant. Imagine, to do experiments with embryonic cells, the Americans prepared 20 volumes of documentation, it took 4 years. We think that we will print the first functional kidney in 2018. And then clinical testing is very expensive and time-consuming. If we successfully print the thyroid gland, then the kidney is just a matter of time. Technically, we know 90 percent how to do it.
I WANT TO LOSE US NOSE
In the mass consciousness, there is an idea that the cutting edge of science is the West. Many of our scientists have left the country. And you have returned. Why?
“I'm not the only one back. Our team has 40 years of collective experience abroad. We have something to compare. I worked for 20 years at universities in the USA and Germany, with the head of the laboratory, Sergei Novoselov, 10 years of work in the States. Our other scientists collaborated with universities in Switzerland, Israel … And so we have a common opinion that now in Russia there are conditions for doing arrogant, high-tech, revolutionary things in science.
I regularly ask colleagues: "Maybe I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that something in Russia is changing for the better?" They answer: "We also have the same feeling." I ask the second question: "Isn't this an example of the classic illness of the intelligentsia, when we take what we wish for reality?" They answer: "No, it seems like the military-industrial complex is starting to rise, the money went into science" …
What made you leave America?
- Two factors. First, a new generation of business people has appeared in Russia. Our investors, for example, have made money by creating thousands of diagnostic centers throughout Russia. They are millionaires and will soon become billionaires. They already have everything. Why are they investing in a risky technology like bioprinting rather than investing like "normal people" in yachts and private jets? It really attracted me. It turns out that in Russia, in principle, everything can be done. They say: a terrible Russian bureaucracy, no one needs anything … Now we will wipe the Americans' nose: for the first time, we will send a new type of 3D bioprinter into space - a magnetic one.
Why go into space?
- Why are we doing layer-by-layer printing on earth? Because there is gravity. And there is no gravity in orbit - the cells float in zero gravity, then we create a magnetic field, give a signal and the organ is formed by itself. Imagine if at car factories the parts start assembling themselves into the car? In the US, I was not allowed to go to NASA as I am a foreigner. And in Russia - please! We went to the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, which is responsible for some of the experiments on board the ISS. They immediately jumped at the idea. This was a pleasant surprise.
Obama says: "Russia does not produce anything!" He doesn't even know what we are capable of. We were the first to send a man into space! We have the largest number of world chess champions! But this is in the past. And now we will be the first in the world to print the thyroid gland, and Russia will go down in history as a country at the origin of a new technological revolution.