View our most recent press releases and media coverage.

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Media Contact
Ken Li
5871 Oberlin Drive
San Diego, CA 92121
media@organovo.com
312.997.2436 x 109
312.532.4675

March 16, 2010
Organovo Names Marie Csete Executive Vice President of Research and Development

December 1, 2009
Organovo Develops First Commercial 3D Bio-Printer for Manufacturing Human Tissue and Organs

October 26, 2009
Organovo Appoints Robert Baltera to Board

July 11, 2010
Wired
Sir, Your Liver Is Ready: Behind the Scenes of Bioprinting

Say goodbye to donor lists and organ shortages. A biotech firm has created a printer that prints veins using a patients’ own cells. The device could potentially create whole organs in the future. “Right now we’re really good at printing blood vessels,” says Ben Shepherd, senior research scientist at regenerative-medicine company Organovo. “We printed 10 this week. We’re still learning how to best condition them to be good, strong blood vessels.”

Most organs in the body are filled with veins, so the ability to print vascular tissue is a critical building block for complete organs. The printed veins are about to start testing in animal trials, and eventually go through human clinical trials. If all goes well, in a few years you may be able to replace a vein that has deteriorated (due to frequent injections of chemo treatment, for example) with custom-printed tissue grown from your own cells. [ Read More ]


June 8, 2010
FierceBiotech Research
Organovo machine could "print" new organs

The regenerative medicine company Organovo has made a prototype machine that can "print" new arteries by assembling living tissue. And they say that the same approach will one day allow doctors to print new organs for patients in need of a transplant.

Organovo creates a "bioink" of discrete cellular aggregates, each made up of many cells. These are used as a building block, as the bioprinter places these cell aggregates with high precision into a predetermined pattern. The cell aggregates all fuse together over time (within about 24 hours), creating a brand new piece of tissue. The tissue is held together by the same forces that the tissues in one's body use: cells attach to other cells, and cells produce collagen and attach to collagen. Cells know exactly how to behave once placed in the right orientation by the printer. [ Read More ]


May 28, 2010
Fast Company
The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2010

Think your printer produces lifelike images? Gabor Forgacs created one that prints the stuff of life -- specifically "bio ink," a liquid made up of cells. The cells cluster together and grow, and as he adds layers of bio ink, a 3-D structure takes shape. Last year, Forgacs, 61, printed the first branching vascular tissue and successfully implanted a nerve graft into an animal. For now, he can do only simple tissues, such as blood vessels, but these advances are the first step to printing and growing replacement skin, muscle, and eventually organs. [ Read More ]


May 24, 2010
CNN Money
Growing brand-new organs on-demand [Video]

May 10, 2010
San Diego Business Journal
Organovo Aims to 'Print' Replacement Organs for Humans

Patients living with impaired or diseased organs typically have few options at their disposal. Surgical interventions can repair organs, but the worst cases require transplants, and sometimes right away.

But finding a compatible match can take time. Patients waiting for a donor are often in critical condition with their life hanging in the balance as they await a transplantable organ.

Enter what's being touted as a health care solution of the future: regenerative techniques that take a patient's own cells to re-grow tissues and organs at the bedside. By relying on a patient's own cells, the risk of an autoimmune rejection of the transplanted organ is greatly reduced. [ Read More ]


February 18, 2010
The Economist
Making a Bit of me: A machine that prints organs is coming to market

The great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs.

The new machine has been developed by Organovo, a company in San Diego that specialises in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. One of Organovo’s founders, Gabor Forgacs of the University of Missouri, developed the prototype on which the new 3D bio-printer is based. The first production models will soon be delivered to research groups which, like Dr Forgacs’s, are studying ways to produce tissue and organs for repair and replacement. At present much of this work is done by hand or by adapting existing instruments and devices. [ Read more ]


February 16, 2010
10 News San Diego
Local Company's Machine Prints Tissues to Build Organs

A local biotech company has developed a machine with the ability to print tissue needed to build organs. While it might look like any other lab in San Diego's biotech corridor in Sorrento Valley, the projects being worked on at Organovo could be life-changing for millions of people.

"Basically, I think we've put in one of the building blocks that will help change the transplant industry," said Richard Grant, vice president of Invetech.

Grant is referring to a special machine his company helped design for Organovo. The machine acts like a copy machine, but it prints cells to make human tissue and eventually organs. [ Read more ]


January 8, 2010
Xconomy
San Diego’s Organovo Develops Bio-Printer Technology to Engineer New Organs

A biomedical startup in San Diego is giving new form to tissue engineering, with the help of proprietary technology licensed from the University of Missouri and a 3-D “bio-printer” capable of building human blood vessels and organs.

Organovo CEO Keith Murphy demonstrated the bio-printer for me several weeks ago, explaining that the technology was developed by Gabor Forgacs, a professor of biological physics at the University of Missouri. “The technology really sparked the germ of the company,” says Murphy, who previously spent 10 years at Thousand Oaks, CA-based Amgen.
[ Read more ]


January 7, 2010
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Organovo Upbeat on Tissue 'Printer'

The challenge was to build a new kind of machine: a three-dimensional “printer” that would enable scientists to one day build human organs cell by cell.

A small San Diego biotechnology company, Organovo, commissioned the system last year, aiming to advance its own work in tissue regeneration while also selling additional machines to academic researchers. [ Read more ]


January 4, 2010
Times of India
For Human Tissue, Just Hit ctrl+p

Scientists have taken a major step forward in generating human organs with the world’s first 3D bio-printer. The development is sure to benefit bioengineers and doctors the world over.

The device was produced by Invetech, and the first one has already been delivered to the San Diego-based firm Organovo. Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, said the units are a breakthrough because they provide for the first time a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement. “Scientists and engineers can use the 3D bio-printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3D,” Murphy said. [ Read more ]


December 23, 2009
Information Week
3D Printer Builds Artificial Blood Vessels

Objects take about an hour to build, and then the cells fuse together on their own in the course of 24-48 hours, locking the object in shape.

3D printers are an emerging technology with a wide variety of applications. Like Organovo's equipment, they build 3D objects by laying down two-dimensional layers one on top of the other. They typically use plaster, cornstarch or resins to create objects, and are most often used in rapid prototoyping, for footwear, jewelry, industrial design, architecture, automotive, aerospace, dental, and medical industries. [ Read more ]


October 1, 2009
Inc.
Reengineering the Human Body

Organovo is working at the cutting edge of regenerative medicine. The San Diego—based company is developing organ-printing technology that CEO Keith Murphy says will usher in a new age of "tissue on demand," built in the lab. Using droplets of "bio ink" made of cells taken from a patient's body, Organovo's bioprinter lays down a three-dimensional pattern that assembles itself into a new organ. The company is focusing first on building arteries to be used in bypass procedures -- initially for the legs, and eventually for the heart. [ Read more ]


September 7, 2009
San Diego Business Journal
Life Sciences Startups Landing Grants

With venture capital funding all but dried up for many life sciences startups, some have turned to agencies that specialize in navigating complex government databases and matching businesses with sometimes lucrative grants.

Government money has traditionally served as a kind of starting point for many academics and early stage researchers hoping to see their ideas through the clinic, but as traditional private funding sources dissipate, biotechs are increasingly turning to the federal government for support. [ Read more]