This topic has been revealed during the program “Today Morning” on the TV channel “Zvezda” (“Star”) by Associate Professor of the Engineering and Physical Institute of Biomedicine (EPIB) of SRNU MIFR Vladimir Mironov. The Russian scientist is a pioneer of world biprinting, dealing with this problem for about 20 years, he worked in the USA, Germany and Brazil, being author of the world’s first publication on organ bioprinting (2003) and many scientific articles in leading international journals.
Currently, Vladimir Mironov is the scientific director of the Laboratory of biotechnology research in 3D Bioprinting Solutions. Under his leadership in 2015, for the first time in world practice, a bioprinter has printed a functional thyroid gland of the mouse, which was successfully implanted in animal organism. In 2021, at EPIB, he headed the work on bioprinting of human cartilage and hair.
During the broadcast, Vladimir Mironov told why digitalization and robotization is needed in medicine, why additive technologies (layered building and synthesis of objects) can be considered the 4th industrial revolution and what medical technologies are profitable to invest in today.
“Every hour in the world, one person dies who could not wait for a transplant, – the scientist says. – Therefore, the donation market is colossal, only in China about 2 million people are waiting for a new kidney. Today there are already investors, including in Russia, which are not interested in yachts and cars, this is primitive for them, they are investing in serious things – in science, in medicine.”
According to the scientist, investing in the field of biomedical technologies will become soon one of the most profitable strategies. So far scientists have learned to print only fabric and organ structures, we are not talking about mass printing of whole organs yet. But, Mironov believes, this will be possible in the next 10 years, if we “create a cohesive multidisciplinary scientific group”, and then in the near future “the organ can be printed directly at the patient’s bedside.”
Under the guidance of a scientist, a bioprinter was created, which is today, according to independent estimates of international ratings, in 4-5th place in the world, and in its own functionality can be given the 1st place:
“We can make good bioprinters, but not yet in large-scale production, however, import substitution becomes real,” – Mironov emphasized.