Ronawk and B9Creations Accelerate Bioprinted Hydrogels

Ronawk, a company that produces advanced tissue mimetic technologies, has named B9Creations its global additive manufacturing partner. While other methods force cells into an artificial environment, Ronawk’s Bio-Blocks recreate an environment that allows cells to form tissues as they would naturally. The result is tissue which resembles the native architecture and function of tissue in the body.

Using this process, Bio-Block cells maintain a high-level of metabolism, viability, and proliferation which leads to an output  of a variety of biologics to drive advancements in human and animal biological therapies, diagnostics, prognostics, and countermeasures to biological threats.

Growing Cells in 3D

Since the 1950s plasticware has been the most common platform scientists use to grow cells. These vessels are 100,000X stiffer than soft tissue environments like skin, liver, fat, kidney, lungs and the brain, and can only grow in 2D unlike the 3D environment of the body. Since the 1980s, scientists have been able to grow 3D organoid structures utilizing gel-based scaffolds. These scaffolds have a host of issues including being made from animal tumors, inconsistent results that are not repeatable, and are incredibly difficult to scale. 

Ronawk’s tissue mimetic substrate enables cells to cultivate microenvironments that streamline the process of growing tissue and cells outside the body in a manner that more closely resembles how cells grow naturally in the body:

Image courtesy of B9Creations

The form factor of Bio-Blocks allows for imaging to take place throughout the process. Ronawk’s platform allows researchers to explore heretofore unseen intricacies of stem cell behavior, and it accelerates the pace of drug discovery and the development of tailored therapeutic strategies by offering insights into cellular responses and treatment effects with unprecedented consistency and precision. 

“Collaboration is critical for turning research advances into commercial therapies rapidly. The complexity and diversity of modalities is so big that nobody can do it alone,” said Ronawk co-founder and CTO Heather Decker in a statement. “The future of next-generation therapies is not only about discovering them but manufacturing them in a better way. We needed a company who was responsive, collaborative, and had deep systems expertise in how their hardware, software and our proprietary bio-ink worked together to deliver a solution at scale. Leveraging B9Creations’ technology and consultative services, we produced in 6 hours what we used to produce in a month.”

New Standards in Tissue Engineering

Ronawk is not just advancing; it is setting new standards in the realm of tissue engineering. Where the field typically splits into scaffold-based and scaffold-free approaches, Ronawk confidently marries both approaches into a third method. Its innovative platform empowers cells to start with a scaffold for essential early support, then progress to organically form tissue-like structures that not only mimic but start to organize into functional organ-like structures. This breakthrough facilitates healthier cell growth, authentic cell signaling, and natural formation of tissue microenvironments, significantly boosting the potential of all downstream applications.

“As a biotechnology company with a mission to accelerate next generation therapies, we needed to partner with a company that is as innovative and agile as we are in order to achieve our potential,” said Tom Jantsch, Ronawk president and COO, in a statement. “B9Creations’ solutions business model and customizable hardware and software toolset enabled our team to move this effort from R&D into production and commercialization which will democratize access to healthcare research worldwide.”