INSIDE • Tony Atala: Building Better Body Parts • PW Singer: Waging War With Robots • Chip Clark: Vaccines To Vanquish Disease • Word On The Street • Emerging Tech Portfolio Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Volume 10/ Number 5/ May 2011 www.forbesnanotech.com REPORT Tony Atala: Building Better Body Parts The Insider JOSH WOLFE, EDITOR r. Anthony Atala is director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medi- obotic warfare, regrow- Dcine, where his work focuses on grow- ing organs, rapidly mak- ing and regenerating tissues and organs. He is Ring new vaccines: The also chair of the department of urology at the future is here, it's just unevenly Wake Forest University School of Medicine in distributed. And our three ex- North Carolina. His team engineered the first clusive interviews this month lab-grown organ to be implanted into a reveal three more clues to who human–a bladder–and is developing experi- your couriers of the future are. mental fabrication technology that can print We start with Tony Atala, human tissue on demand. In 2007, Atala and a the director of the Institute team of Harvard University researchers showed for Regenerative Medicine at that stem cells can be harvested from the amni- Wake Forest. His lab focuses otic fluid of pregnant women. This and other on growing organs from breakthroughs in the development of smart bio- blood vessels to bladders and materials and tissue fabrication technology beyond. Consider the impact promises to revolutionize the practice of medi- and implications of his cine. Atala was born in Peru in 1958 and grew breakthrough work on pa- up in Boca Raton, Florida. He obtained his un- tients who wait today on dis- dergraduate degree in psychology from the tressing donor lists for criti- University of Miami, and his medical degree TONY ATALA cal organs they need—and from the University of Louisville where he also imagine the ability to print completed his residency in urology. From 1990-1992, he trained under world-renowned pediatric urologic sur- Continued on page 2 geons Alan Retik and Hardy Hendren as a fellow at the Harvard Medical School affiliated Children's Hospital Boston. Continued on page 2 PW Singer: Chip Clark: Waging War Vaccines To With Robots Vanquish Disease eter Warren Singer is an author and sen- hip Clark is the chief executive offi- ior fellow and director of the 21st Cen- cer of Genocea Biosciences, a vaccine Ptury Defense Initiative at the Brookings Cdevelopment company based on a Institution. He is the youngest scholar named revolutionary platform for the rapid discov- senior fellow in Brookings's 90-year history. Dr. ery of antigens that induce T-cell immunity Singer’s most recent book, Wired for War (Pen- (Full disclosure: my venture firm Lux Capital PW SINGER guin, 2009), looks at the implications of robotics CHIP CLARK is an equity investor). Clark joins Genocea and other new Continued on page 4 with more than 20 Continued on page 6 Continued from page 1 The Insider Tony Atala: Building Better Body Parts Continued from page 1 nary areas with a common goal of achieving cartilage and skin tissues. and grow organs, like we print paper the regeneration of diseased or injured tissues or prototypes on 3D printers today. and organs. Could you walk through the process of It is this steady march of technol- how you grow a bladder outside the ogy and its healing potential that at- How old of a field is this? body? tracts talent and attention. But technol- The field really dates back to the early 1900s, We take a very small piece of tissue from the ogy's power also attracts talent and when people started thinking about the re- specific organ of interest within a patient–less attention, to both protect and destroy. placement of organs and creating tissues. than half the size of a postage stamp. Then we We speak with military and technol- Through the years it has taken on many dif- grow and extend these cells outside the body ogy expert PW Singer in an exclusive ferent names, including cell transplantation in large quantities. We are then able to create a and wide-ranging interview on the and tissue engineering. It’s finally come to- biomaterial that replicates the structural prop- complicated and quickly changing na- gether as a common area we now call regener- erties of the tissue or organ being replaced, ture of technology in combat and the ative medicine. and we coat or layer the cells onto this bioma- rapidly evolving way we wage war. PW terial, one layer at a time. Then, we are able to is the author of Wired for War (a dou- What were some of the early successes in place these cells and this material in a biore- ble entendre suggesting both our ma- the space? actor, which has the same conditions as the chines and ourselves) and discusses One of the very first applications of cells for human body. Finally, we are able to place that 21st century warfare and how robots regeneration of tissue dates back to 1981, functional tissue or organ back into the pa- are becoming as significant as gun- when a patient with a burn had a very small tient. In some ways, it’s very much like baking powder. As one friend says: it's our Sil- piece of normal skin taken, then grown out- a cake. icon versus their sons. side the body and subsequently placed over We also sit with Chip Clark, CEO the burn area. It did not regenerate the skin, So if you were to write a cookbook on of Genocea (full disclosure: my ven- but it did help the wound to heal faster, and growing an organ, what are the basic ture firm, Lux Capital is a founding in- that's the very first time that cells were used to ingredients required? vestor) who is fighting another kind of help to regenerate tissue. Since that time we’ve First you need a cell source. Then you need warfare: biological. Chip shares stories had to face many challenges in the field, some adequate biomaterial to create a struc- at the front lines of the fight against in- which involve how to get cells to effectively tural scaffold. Finally, you need sufficient vas- fectious disease and the quest to pro- grow outside the body, how to make sure cularity for blood flow. tect mankind from some of the worst these tissues function properly, and how to offenders by rapidly discovering and safely turn these cells into effective therapies Are you effectively trying to recreate the developing new vaccines. for patients. ecosystem of the body externally for cells As always, here's to thinking big to grow? about thinking small and to the Where are the researchers who are Absolutely. We try to replicate the normal emerging inventors and investors who pioneering this space coming from? conditions of the human body outside of the seek to profit from the unexpected and It’s interesting to see that every single major body. At the end of the day, as long as the cells the unseen. university has some activity in the area of are in the right environment, they know what stem cell biology or regenerative medicine at to do. this point. So it is definitely a growing field, and one that is benefiting from more investi- Over the last 30 years, what has been the gators joining the area. It's not just the biggest change in the field of U.S.–there are many countries where these ef- regenerative medicine? forts are being conducted. The U.S. benefits At a high level, we’ve transitioned from con- from the interactions that we have with our cept to practicality. We’ve come to prove that international colleagues. engineering of complex tissues is indeed pos- sible. We faced many challenges along the When was the first time you got way; the first was just the ability to grow cells Broadly, how would you describe the work introduced to the concept of regenerative outside of the body in large quantities–some- that you do? medicine? thing very hard to do several decades ago. The What we're working on is really the field of re- I'm a pediatric surgeon; I was looking at alter- second was vascularity–the ability to have generative medicine–trying to get cells and natives to the standard approaches for doing cells be fed with blood vessels so that they tissues to regenerate, so that we can help ac- surgery on children with congenital defects. I could survive a long time. The third was bio- celerate the delivery of these technologies to realized that probably the best option would materials–finding the right materials to use so patients. be to replace their diseased tissue with their we could actually engineer tissues that would own tissues that could be created outside the be biocompatible, and more importantly, What is regenerative medicine? body. The first thing we started working on function as they are supposed to. A science that involves many multi-discipli- was bladder tissue, and we also worked with 2 | MAY 2011 © COPYRIGHT 2011 FORBES/WOLFE EMERGING TECH REPORT Tony Atala: Building Better Body Parts Continued from page 2 ture in a rabbit model, and we were able to other types of organs like bladders, urethras "We’ve come to show that it functioned quite fully, to the point and blood vessels. The number of tissues that prove that where these rabbits could give rise to off- are currently being studied and that are being spring.