The next Apple in biotech

3-D printing is a revolutionary mega trend currently ongoing. It is still at its early stage but it may repeat what has happened to the creation of Internet and its impact ensued to the whole world. Of course, this is a very big trend touching all the aspects of the human activities but its application to medicine, so-called Bioprinting, could be one of the most important ones. Actually, using this 3-D bioprinting technology, scientists have already created create artificial airways and cartilage, but future innovations may bring in greater potential for revolutionizing medicine.

One small company is clearly the front-runner in Bioprinting and if it can maintain its momentum and continue with new exploration of this technology in various innovations, it may become Apple in this field, leading the super trend of 3-D Bioprinting. I’m talking about Organovo (ONVO). There are two areas in the foreseeable future that ONVO could make some breakthroughs:
 

·         Organovo is developing its first commercial product due in 2014: bioprinted liver tissue. For people like me and many of my friends who have been involved in drug development, it is well known how costly it is to successfully bring a drug to the market for a company. In average it takes over 10 years and over $1 Billion. One major cost is the high failure rate due to drug toxicity and liver toxicity is also one of the most common and important one to determine the fate of a drug. If a company can freely print 3-D liver tissue that can be used by the company to test drugs on their potential toxicology problems at the early stage, it will be a huge cost saving for the company. The market is huge beyond imagine. The next product line for Organovo is bioprinting of tumors.  Organovo is currently working with Oregon Health and Science University's Knight Cancer Center to use 3-D bioprinting to generate tumor models. This kind of 3-D tumor models can mimic the actual physiology of the tumor and therefore can dramatically improve the drug development process with respect to testing new cancer drugs.

·         The longer term of more aggressive use of the Bioprinting technology is to create new human organs for transplantation. As we all know, the medical technique for organ transplantation has been very mature but the critical bottleneck is the source of organs that are available for waiting patients. Unfortunately many patients cannot wait till the time when the organ becomes available and pass away prematurely. If printing live organs becomes a reality, which I’m sure will be sooner or later, organ transplantation will become a routine operation to save life of millions of patients. The research and development in this area is certainly actively underway in Organovo.

Of course, I’m not saying you should buy Organovo immediately as its price has been chased up dramatically in the past few months. It will likely be very volatile. This is a very long term trend and along the way, it will be very bumpy for ONVO. Remember, Apple has come to the brink of bankruptcy at least two times before it becomes what it is now. Those with the faith, persistence and courage to accumulate more shares of Apple when it plunged like a stone are the ones who have become rich with Apple. I think there is a good chance that ONVO will follow a similar path. If it is indeed on sale someday, consider to get in.