A lot of people know that 3D printing exists but don’t know what it is or how it works. How would you explain 3D printing?
3D printing involves adding materials – layer by layer – to build a 3D object. This is why it’s also called additive manufacturing.
People tend to be more familiar with the kinds of manufacturing where you start with a substructure and then chip away, like sculpting wood or metal machining. Such traditional methods are certainly still common, but additive manufacturing is becoming increasingly prominent because it’s creating new opportunities in numerous fields. A lot more things become possible when you’re able to build piece by piece, as opposed to being limited by a substructure.
And what about 3D bioprinting more specifically?
3D bioprinting is applying this additive approach to objects you’d otherwise only find within living organisms. If you want to build animal tissue in a lab, you can’t start with a block of wood or piece of metal because substructures like that don’t have the cells and other biomaterials that constitute tissue.
3D bioprinting deposits such materials in the form of bio-ink, which refers to any useful combination of these materials that can be printed with consistent distribution (the specific combination and distribution of these materials will differ according to the specific 3D object being printed). This bio-ink can be printed into actual tissue, making the whole process incredibly important for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.
Aleph Farms uses cellular agriculture to grow food and other products from animal cells. Why is 3D bioprinting important for this?
Aleph’s strategy for driving long-term impact centers on offering an array of culturally relevant and high-quality cultivated animal products. In the context of the company’s current focus – cultivated beef steaks grown from cow cells – this means accounting for lots of different consumer preferences, which vary between cultures and even more from individual to individual.
Some people prefer lean steaks, while others want thicker cuts. Some people like marbling; others less so. With more cuts of steak, we can appeal to more taste buds. Wider appeal accelerates consumer acceptance, so it’s important to offer a diverse portfolio of options.
3D bioprinting enables us to offer this diversity because it prints the cultivated steak layer by layer. Each layer is composed of both cow cells and an extracellular matrix, which provides those cells with structure and support – imagine it as the cement that fills space between the bricks of a building. Printing each layer with cells and extracellular matrix together enables us to achieve thicker tissue, and because we control the precise distribution of cells in that tissue, we can create marbled steaks of varying thickness.
So you and your team can build any steak?
Computer modeling provides us with an astounding level of precision that opens doors to endless culinary opportunities. 3D bioprinting picks up where the modeling leaves off and designs the perfect physical cut – marbling and all.
There is certainly a road ahead of us, of course. For example, as with other aspects of growing animal products from cells, scaling up is a challenge. In 2021, we unveiled the world’s first cultivated 3D-bioprinted ribeye steak. It was a major accomplishment, but it’s important to remember that we did this with a lab-scale 3D bioprinter.
It’s now 2023, and all bioprinters are still at this scale. In order to meet widespread consumer demand, we need to develop industrial-sized bioprinters. This is something we’re working on currently. Success will require printers capable of food grade production, which means that these printers have to be both fast and efficient.
Let’s talk about you and your team. What does your role entail?
As the senior manager on the 3D bioprinting team, my main responsibilities are ensuring that my team has the right technological guidance and building work plans in line with the company’s broader aims.
Our work is incredibly multidisciplinary – we constantly straddle numerous scientific disciplines, including food science, chemistry, engineering, material science, physics, and more. For every experiment – and there are a lot of them – we go over its different elements, including its design, results and conclusions.
All in all, my role can be boiled down to two words: technology and teamwork – two things that are extremely rewarding for me.
Sounds both fun and intense!
It is. This is why when we’re recruiting new team members, we look for candidates who are both excited by the prospect of success and ready to experience lots of failure along the way. This is what shows true determination – experiencing failure, learning from it, and overcoming it.
It’s also about being able to work in a multidisciplinary environment. This means a lot of curiosity, a mind that is open to learning new things, and an eagerness to find solutions to complicated problems.
Finally, passion is important. That doesn’t mean you need to wear your heart on your sleeve. Even if you’re a shy, introverted researcher, your passion will shine through.
You joined Aleph after a good amount of time working in the corporate space, including eight years at HP. How would you compare that experience to working at a growth-stage company?
I loved working at HP and look back at my time there with great fondness. I left because I craved something new in terms of technology. Once in the startup environment, I fell in love with its dynamism, the ability to significantly influence the technology, and team-building, the last of which has taken on multiple meanings for me at Aleph Farms. First, actually compiling the team – at the beginning, I was the only person working on 3D bioprinting, and now I get to interact with fantastic team members every day. Second, helping each and every one of those team members grow and develop their own skill sets.
When I joined Aleph, I came in with a strong background in chemistry that was not already present here. There is actually a lot of materials science involved in growing cultivated animal products, so this background has really helped in terms of developing our bioprinting process and its supporting materials.
I love being able to shape our work. I’m excited for every milestone that lies ahead, and I know there will be plenty.
