Startup gets grants to print body parts

A biotech startup company developing technology to “print” body parts using a patient’s own cells has received support from the National Science Foundation and the Livestrong cancer foundation.
Founded in El Paso by University of Texas at El Paso professor Thomas Boland and entrepreneur Laura Bosworth in 2011, TeVido BioDevices hopes to improve the quality of life for breast cancer survivors by using 3D printing technology to improve breast reconstruction results.
Scientists have been able to form basic types of human tissue using 3D bio-printers for a number of years and imagine a future where organs, like hearts or kidneys, are custom built for transplant patients.
But the technology is in its infancy, so TeVido is starting with a much simpler body part: the nipple.

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To that end, the startup was recently awarded seed funding from two cancer-fighting giants, and in October, placed second in a global venture competition hosted by the Livestrong Foundation.
The National Science Foundation awarded TeVido a $750,000 “Phase 2” grant in August, according to Bosworth, so it can begin the next round of testing.
A few weeks later, they received word that the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health had awarded TeVido a $150,000 “Phase 1” grant.
In October, TeVido was also named runner-up in a new global innovation competition called Big C. The Livestrong Foundation launched the competition this year to improve the lives of people affected by cancer. TeVido placed second, out of 753 competitors, losing only to a San Francisco-based startup called Decisive Health, according to the announcement.
“The relationship with a foundation like Livestrong is going to be really valuable in the future as we start to try to have conversations with the other organizations that are focused on breast cancer,” Bosworth said.
Growing demand
As more people survive breast cancer and some, like actress Angelina Jolie, even undergo preventative mastectomies based on genetic testing for breast cancer, the need for better breast reconstruction surgery is growing, Bosworth said.
“The great news is that treatment for breast cancer has gotten so much better and the survival rates are so much better that longterm quality of life has become increasingly important,” she said.
Almost 300,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year. About 40 percent of those women diagnosed will have a mastectomy, and at least 30 percent will undergo reconstruction, according to TeVido.
But in the world of cancer research, little money goes toward improving reconstruction, Bosworth said, and reconstruction results today can be unpredictable.
“I think it is something that women think they can’t talk about very much because, you know, people just look at you and say, ‘You’re alive – what are you doing complaining about the reconstruction,’” Bosworth said.
There are many different ways surgeons form the nipple, or “volume-forming unit,” Bosworth said, after a woman undergoes a mastectomy and breast reconstruction, but they all tend to sink over time.
Some women have the color tattooed on, but the color tends to fade. It’s a traumatizing process.
“Because we would be using a woman’s own fat cells and skin cells, we would be creating a graft that is a more permanent solution,” she said.
TeVido has managed to fashion a small, living nipple out of fat cells and the initial results “look encouraging,” Bosworth said, but they are working to optimize the process to create the pigmented skin.
Bosworth estimates the startup needs to raise $40 million to complete animal and human clinical testing and bring the product to market. If all goes perfectly, she hopes to have grafts ready for implantation in patients in five years.
Later, the startup anticipates using the technology to create breast tissue to fill lumpectomies and create other types of natural human grafts for reconstructive procedures using 3D bio-printing.
Move to Austin
TeVido moved its operations out of El Paso and into a laboratory in Austin in October, after outgrowing its lab space at UTEP. The biotech sector in El Paso is small but growing, and laboratories are in short supply. Outside of the area’s universities, they are nearly nonexistent, said Al Di Rienzo, executive director of El Paso-based RedSky.
RedSky is a new spinoff of the Medical Center of the Americas Foundation, which is guiding the development of a biomedical research park encompassing the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine and University Medical Center in South Central El Paso.
When startups like TeVido “graduate out of academic institutions here they need labs, so they are forced to go to other parts of the country,” Di Rienzo said.
TeVido now operates in a lab at the Texas Life-sciences Collaboration Center in Georgetown, a suburb of Austin. The center was founded in 2007 to bring high-wage jobs to Georgetown by nurturing and recruiting biotechnology companies there.
RedSky intends to do the same thing in El Paso, and the MCA Foundation begins construction in a few weeks on a $29-million “biomedical innovation center” called the Cardwell Collaborative in South Central El Paso near Interstate 10. The four-story building will have three “very large” wet laboratories for companies like TeVido to use, according to Di Rienzo.
“There are a lot of amazing things happening out there (in El Paso),” Bosworth said. “But the timing is a problem because none of it is ready yet.”
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