*The first and most basic one is that a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. The second definition I will alow is a plural one: technology as an assembloage of practices and components. I will also allow a third meaning. This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices availabe to a culture
David S Kong, Joseph Jacobson and George Church opened the class with overall view on Gene therapy, DNA storage and Gene synthesis. Megan Palmer gave us on the bio policy.
Bioprinting is an additive manufacturing process similar to 3D printing – it uses a digital file as a blueprint to print an object layer by layer. But unlike 3D printing, bioprinters print with cells and biomaterials, creating organ-like structures that let living cells multiply. Bioprinting is a pretty new technology, and it has huge potential to benefit industries like medicine and cosmetics.
What are the applications of bioprinting?
Today’s bioprinting technologies are still new to many researchers. As scientists in the field continue making discoveries, bioprinting can have a huge impact on a range of application areas
· Drug development. Many of today’s studies rely on living subjects – an inconvenient and expensive method for both academic and commercial organizations. Bioprinted tissues can be used instead during the early stages, providing a more ethical and cost-effective solution. Using bioprinting tissue can help researchers determine a drug candidate’s efficacy sooner, enabling them to save money and time.
· Artificial organs. The organ donation list is so long that patients wait years before getting the help they need. Being able to bio print organs could help clinicians keep up with patients or eliminate the list entirely. While this solution is far down the line, it is one of the most impactful possibilities in the field.
· Wound healing. A lot of tissue-specific bioinks are available today, enabling researchers to work with artificial skin cells, neurons, hepatocytes and more. One day, clinicians could use these models for therapeutic procedures like skin grafts, bone bandages for combat wounds or even plastic surgery.
Bioprinting of human organs is a technology that can widen the division between the rich and the poor. While the state-of-the-art of 3D printing (including 3D printing of human organs) in developing countries is still at an early stage, the technology application promises vast solutions to existing societal problems. On one hand, bioprinting’s ability to build customized human anatomical parts has pervasive appeal in medical device markets, especially in economically weak and war-torn regions where it might address the high demand for prosthetics and other medical devices. On the other hand, densely populated regions with inadequate access to emerging healthcare technology could face inequality issues. Bioprinting can also contribute to inequality between different countries because it could advance unabated in countries with less-restrictive government oversight, whereas clinical trials and testing of organs for transplantation in some countries could take up to a decade (e.g., given the FDA’s stringent reviews in the United States). Additionally, some bioprinted products could become cheaper and more accessible but other products that could be extremely complex to bioprint (e.g., functioning hearts), would likely be only accessible to those willing to pay for personalized treatments. If bioprinted human tissues and organs are more expensive than the existing medical treatments, healthcare would likely not cover such costs, and thus, only the rich would be able to afford them. Thus the majority of the population in the developing countries could be deprived of the benefits of this new technology.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) addresses the emergency use of unproven interventions outside clinical research in its Guidance for managing ethical issues in infectious disease outbreaks1. The situations where it might be appropriate to consider provision of an experimental intervention outside clinical trials are listed and include when it is not possible to initiate clinical studies immediately. Therefore, where the possibility to participate in a clinical trial is available then this should be offered in preference to compassionate use provision of an unproven intervention.
<aside> 🧬 Collaboration and expedited ethics approval
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A core protocol where several potential treatments are evaluated simultaneously allows for the trial to be extended over several infectious disease outbreaks. The protocol should specify that efficacy data from a trial where recruitment is incomplete must not be released.
<aside> 🧬 Compassionate use vs clinical trials
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