Speaker
Description
Biofabrication technologies have been largely developed to address medical needs, with the ultimate goal of enabling regenerative therapies. However, in our effort to advance toward that goal, we often generate tools, insights, and applications that reveal their own value in complementary, non-medical domains.
In this keynote, I will share how our work in chaotic bioprinting—originally designed for engineering aligned, vascularizable, and functional tissue constructs—has unexpectedly opened doors to alternative applications outside of traditional therapeutic frameworks.
For instance, our pursuit of structured musculoskeletal tissues and prevascularized constructs led us to develop methods for fabricating hydrogel-based architectures with internal microchannels. These channels enhance mass transport and offer a highly accessible surface-area-to-volume ratio. While initially conceived as a strategy to improve the survival and function of living tissues, this approach also revealed opportunities for scalable cell expansion—relevant for both regenerative medicine and future applications in cultured meat.
Inspired by this crossover potential, we adapted our chaotic printing platform to create structured, plant-based meat analogues through FORMA Foods. By translating lessons from tissue engineering into food-grade materials, we are now exploring the fabrication of fibrous, texturally complex constructs that reach consumers sooner and offer insights into scale-up, material behavior, and structure-function relationships—insights that may eventually inform biomedical strategies.
We also explored the biofabrication of microbial consortia using spatially controlled hydrogel constructs. By positioning bacterial species according to their known physiological preferences—such as oxygen sensitivity, acid tolerance, or metabolic compatibility—we aim to promote coexistence and collaborative behavior within defined 3D arrangements. This work opens new directions for advanced probiotics and the engineering of microbial ecosystems.
Finally, I will highlight two interdisciplinary collaborations sparked by our biofabrication platform: one in aquaculture, where layered chaotic fibers are being explored as functional implants to help regulate fish metabolism and behavior for production purposes; and one in materials science, where co-printing nanocellulose-based hydrogels embedded with magnetic and conductive elements results in cryogels with electromagnetic shielding properties.
These explorations, while seemingly peripheral to traditional tissue engineering, have taught us valuable lessons in material design, patterning, biological interaction, and manufacturability. Far from distractions, these paths enrich our perspective and may ultimately feed back into solving key challenges in regenerative medicine. In this way, even the most unexpected trajectories can bring us closer to meaningful therapeutic impact.
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