Redwire Corp 3D-printed a meniscus on the International Space Station, the first time a human body part to be 3D-printed in space using human-derived tissues, the US aerospace company said on Thursday.
It serves as a vital proof-of-concept for the company as it pursues ways of leveraging the space environment to create human organs and tissues for transplantation.
Redwire is a front-runner in the effort to 3D-print human tissues in space, while the European Space Agency is also funding its own effort. Space has also been an attractive environment for creating protein crystals for use in pharmaceutical drugs, and start-ups such as Varda Space Industries Inc are hoping to leverage microgravity to better improve drug development.
Photo: NASA / Roscosmos / Reuters
Companies have pioneered 3D printing human organs and tissues on Earth for years, but when printing in the presence of gravity, bioengineers often must either add chemicals to their creations to keep the tissues firm or print the tissues onto matrices or scaffolding to provide structure.
It is easier for viscous materials such as tissue to hold their form in space, making them less complicated to construct without chemicals or scaffolding, Redwire said.
“When you turn off gravity, it creates an environment where you can successfully build tissues and organs,” Redwire chief growth officer Mike Gold said in an interview.
Redwire printed the meniscus — a critical cartilage found in the human knee — using human-derived stem cells and collagen in a specialized 3D bioprinter the company launched to the space station late last year aboard a Northrop Grumman Corp cargo capsule. The company then cultured the meniscus for 14 days in another Redwire facility launched to the space station last year.
The demonstration marks the first time a human body part was 3D-printed in space using human-derived tissues, Redwire said.
The printed meniscus returned to Earth on board a Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) Crew Dragon capsule early on Monday. Since this was a demonstration, Redwire has no plans to transplant the meniscus into an actual knee.
“We’re going to study it, understand the process, and try to build from this to reproduce the success, and not only with the meniscus,” Gold said.
Gold declined to comment on the cost of printing the meniscus.
He said that the company’s plan is to figure out how to make organs like the meniscus in an affordable way and at greater scale.
Redwire chose the meniscus as tears of this tissue are one of the leading causes of orthopedic injury for people in the military.
Redwire recently announced a partnership with Sierra Space Corp to create drugs on a future commercial space station. Redwire would be launching more bioprinting payloads to the International Space Station in November on an upcoming SpaceX cargo mission, with plans to 3D-print cardiovascular tissue.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS