It’s been a wild weekend for Russian startup 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
First, the company announced a partnership with fast food chain KFC as part of an effort to create the “world’s first laboratory-produced chicken nuggets.”
Now, the same company is ready to announce that it’s been hard at work bringing similar tech into orbit as well.
In an experiment on board the International Space Station that took place in 2018 but has only now been published, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononoenko was tasked to 3D print human cartilage cells in near-zero gravity using a machine called “Bioprinter Organ.Aut,” as Space.com reports — a machine assembled by, you guessed it, 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
The goal was to investigate ways to reverse some of the negative effects of spending prolonged periods of time in space, in particular evidence that parts of the human body can atrophy over time — something we’ve known about for quite some time.
The eventual hope is to give astronauts the ability to print entire body parts in space, according to the researchers — just in case something goes catastrophically wrong during a mission.
A paper about the research was published in the journal Science Advances last week.
Hellbound and Down 