Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91: “Can we make tissues that are made from you, for you?”

” Can we make cells that are made from you, for you?” asked Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91 at the 2025 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture, arranged by MIT.nano, on Nov. 3. “The grand obstacle objective is to develop these cells for restorative usage and, inevitably, at the entire body organ range.”

Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Teacher of Naturally Influenced Design at Harvard College, is seeking that obstacle via developments in 3D printing. In her talk offered to a mixed in-person and digital target market of over 500 participants, Lewis shared job from her laboratory that concentrates on improved feature in 3D published parts for usage in soft electronic devices, robotics, and life scientific researches.

” Exactly how you make a product impacts its framework, and it impacts its buildings,” claimed Lewis. “This viewpoint was a light bulb minute for me, to consider 3D printing past simply prototyping and making forms, however actually having the ability to manage neighborhood make-up, framework, and buildings throughout numerous ranges.”

An experienced products researcher, Lewis assessed finding out to talk the language of biologists when she signed up with Harvard to begin her very own laboratory concentrated on bioprinting and organic design. Exactly how does one contrast fragments and polymers to stem cells and extracellular matrices? A crucial commonness, she discussed, is the requirement for a product that can be ingrained and after that got rid of, leaving open networks. To satisfy this requirement, Lewis’ laboratory created brand-new 3D printing techniques, advanced printhead styles, and viscoelastic inks– indicating the ink can go back and forth in between fluid and strong type.

Presenting a video clip of a relocating robotic octopus called Octobot, Lewis demonstrated how her team crafted 2 sacrificial inks that transform from liquid to strong upon either warming or air conditioning. The principle attracts ideas from nature– plants that dynamically transform in action to touch, light, warmth, and hydration. For Octobot, Lewis’ group utilized sacrificial ink and an ingrained printing procedure that makes it possible for free-form printing in 3 measurements, instead of layer-by-layer, to develop a totally soft self-governing robotic. An oscillating circuit in the facility overviews the gas (hydrogen peroxide), making the arms go up and down as they blow up and decrease.

From robotics to entire body organ design

” Exactly how can we utilize form changing in cells design?” asked Lewis. “Similar to our blood continually moves via our body, we might have continual supply of recovery.”

Lewis’ laboratory is currently servicing developing human cells, mainly heart, kidney, and analytical cells, utilizing patient-specific cells. The inspiration, Lewis discussed, is not just the requirement for human body organs for individuals with conditions, however the truth that obtaining a given away body organ suggests taking immunosuppressants the remainder of your life. If, rather, the cells might be made from your very own cells, it would certainly be a more powerful suit to your very own body.

” Similar to we did to craft viscoelastic matrices for ingrained printing of useful and architectural products,” claimed Lewis, “we can take stem cells and after that utilize our sacrificial writing technique to create in perfusable vasculature.” The procedure utilizes a method Lewis calls SWIFT– sacrificial creating right into useful cells. Sharing laboratory outcomes, Lewis demonstrated how the stem cells, set apart right into heart foundation, are originally defeating separately, however after being loaded right into a tighter area that will certainly sustain SWIFT, these foundation fuse with each other and turn into one cells that defeats synchronously. After that, her group utilizes a jelly ink that strengthens or dissolves with temperature level adjustments to publish the complicated style of human vessels, purging away the ink to leave open lumens. The network stays open, imitating a capillary network that might have liquid proactively, continually streaming via it. “Where we’re going is to increase this not just to various cells kinds, however additionally integrating in devices whereby we can develop multi-scale vasculature,” claimed Lewis.

Recognizing Mildred S. Dresselhaus

In closing, Lewis assessed Dresselhaus’ favorable influence on her very own profession. “I wish to devote this [talk] to Millie Dresselhaus,” claimed Lewis. She indicated a quote by Millie: “The most effective aspect of having a girl teacher on university is that it informs ladies trainees that they can do it, also.” Lewis, that reached MIT as a products scientific research and design college student in the late 1980s, a time when there were extremely couple of ladies with design doctorates, kept in mind that “simply seeing somebody of her stature was actually a motivation for me. I thank her significantly for all that she’s done, for her outstanding ideas both as a trainee, as a professor, and already, today.”

After the lecture, Lewis was signed up with by Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Profession Advancement Aide Teacher of Cells Design in the MIT Division of Mechanical Design, for a question-and-answer session. Their conversation consisted of concepts on 3D printing software and hardware, cells repair work and regrowth, and bioprinting precede.

” Both Mildred Dresselhaus and Jennifer Lewis have actually made extraordinary payments to scientific research and acted as motivating good example to several in the MIT area and past, including myself,” claimed Raman. “In my very own profession as a cells designer, the devices and methods created by Teacher Lewis and her group have actually seriously educated and made it possible for the research study my laboratory is seeking.”

This was the 7th Dresselhaus Lecture, called in honor of the late MIT Institute Teacher Mildred Dresselhaus, understood to several as the “Queen of Carbon Scientific Research.” The yearly occasion honors a considerable number in scientific research and design from throughout the globe whose management and effect resemble Dresselhaus’ life, achievements, and worths.

” Teacher Lewis exhibits, in many methods, the spirit of Millie Dresselhaus,” claimed MIT.nano Supervisor Vladimir Bulović. “Millie’s revolutionary job, certainly, is popular; and the revolutionary job of Teacher Lewis in 3D printing and bio-inspired products proceeds that heritage.”