"This is not only about bioprinting, but it's also generally about additive technologies, about printing with different materials, not only the biological ones… Our dream is to work with animals on the ISS. But this will require a special infrastructure because these would be experiments of a fundamentally new level", Hesuani said.
He expressed the hope that the station will not only have printers but also boxes for keeping animals and working with them in the future. Experiments with animals, he said, would provide "vast amounts of knowledge, thought, and information for analysis".
As an example of an experiment with an animal in orbit, Hesuani mentioned the use of robotic printers that would print according to a given digital model. First, the cosmonaut, who had previously undergone special surgical training, would make a small tissue defect to the animal, and then would place it in a special box. There, the robotic system itself would replace this defect, which would make it possible to analyse how tissue regeneration occurs in microgravity conditions in real-time.
3D Bioprinting Solutions company is a Laboratory for Biotechnological Research founded by INVITRO, the largest private medical company in Russia. The laboratory develops and produces bioprinters and materials for 3D bioprinting, and also develops innovative technologies in the field of biofabrication.