Media Coverage

In recognition of its active partnering of 3D bioprinting technology with pharmaceutical companies, Organovo was named "Dealmaker of the Year" among San Diego firms for 2011 by Point Loma Nazarene University's School of Business. Federal Reserve branch President James Bullard spoke at the event, at which Organovo's leadership team gratefully accepted the award.

Time Magazine

San Diego Union Tribune

Fast Company
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 3D 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.

San Diego Business Journal
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.

The Economist
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.

Xconomy
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 3D “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.

Information Week
A San Diego company is developing technology to "print" artificial tissues. The long-term goal is to solve problems in medical research that can't be solved otherwise, said Keith Murphy, CEO of the company, Organovo.

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.

Organovo uses 3D printing technology in the biological context.

San Diego Business Journal
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.??

San Diego company Organovo has been able to obtain National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program due to the strength of its novel 3D Bioprinting technologies.