Newcastle Scientists Launches New Tech to Accelerate Drug Discovery

Scientists from Newcastle University have unveiled the Reactive Jet Impingement (ReJI) technology for bioprinting, a new 3-D bio-printer that builds tissue that mimics human tissue. It can lead to the revolutionary discovery of new drugs for different conditions, including heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.

Scientists at Newcastle University have created a new 3D bio-printer that closely mimics human tissues. She thinks the big research undertaking involved development of the printer, in order to whom Versus Arthritis paid the money and to whom the organization got involved with patenting in the US and Europe. Versus Arthritis funded the research through the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Therapies Centre Versus Arthritis.

The team was directed by Professor Kenny Dalgarno, and they worked to overcome several shortcomings of the existing printer. And so, moving on with the process, bioprinting machine technology was identified as Reactive Jet Impingement, or ReJI. This innovative process shoots two different liquids at one another: one containing a polymer solution and one containing a cross-linking solution.

Lucy Donaldson, director of research at Versus Arthritis said, "JetBio's team is leading the way in research promoting new technologies that look promising in providing better-quality and speedy drug development. These advances could possibly bring new drugs to patients earlier-that is for treatment in arthritis, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. An extremely exciting leap forward."

Prof. Dalgarno into Newcastle University's School of Engineering, commented: “Drug discovery is an extremely complicated and expensive process, demanding multiple testing before reaching clinical trials. In clinical investigations, practically only 1 in 10 tested compounds make it to market. With such huge failure rates, it is imperative that better enable models are proposed which more closely represent drug responses seen in humans. There is currently broad interest in developing better human in vitro disease and tissue models, so that there are better ways we can test drugs.”