Running head: B3D LAB 1

Literature Review:

B3D Lab

Silvia Bell

The University of Texas at El Paso

RWS 1302

Paul Vierra

April 16, 2017

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Abstract

Tissue engineering and bioengineering have been evolving all around the world to come

up with new ways to make innovative technology in the medical field industry. It all started

when researchers were finding new ways to have various substitutes for actual organs or tissue.

There are many researchers all over the world and one particular research that I will mention is

B3D lab (Biomedical Device, Delivery, and Diagnostic Lab) that was founded at UTEP. This

literature review will cover several questions about the B3D Lab that implemented at UTEP and

tissue engineering that will provide necessary information to evaluate the questions that are

being asked about tissue engineering and the B3D lab.

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Introduction

The B3D lab known as the The Biomedical Device, Delivery, and Diagnostic lab

(B3D) is focused on the research, change, and fabrication of biomedical implements. These

implements are what makes the research so innovative to help develop more ways to do research.

One of the many research topics that it covers is tissue engineering. It also covers topics like cell

bio printing, nanoparticle drug delivery, low-resource diagnostics, and the early detection of

cancer. The B3D lab is welcomed to students that are in the graduate program all in the medical

field, sciences, or in the field of engineering. The diverse background of all students that are

members of the lab make it possible for the lab to experience large interdisciplinary projects

having to do with that kind of research that they do. The lab brings so much research for the

school and it has made a big movement for the school in that type of field. All the questions that

will be in the literature review will give much insight on what UTEP does in the research they do

in the B3D lab. Each question will have a different perspective of how the question will be

answered and it will be delivered throughout the literature review.

Research Questions

I will be asking several questions within the literature review that will help us understand

the following of what the B3D lab does at UTEP and how it has it has to do with tissue

engineering. You will be able to grasp the knowledge by the following questions. The questions

that will be addressed are as followed:

How has the B3D Lab advanced since it first started at UTEP?
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Why dont we have a degree that has to do specifically with the study of tissue

engineering at UTEP?

Langer (1993) claims that organ and tissue failure are common in failing in

human health care. Is there any evidence of the amount of failures that have

occurred?

What if the B3D lab never existed at UTEP?

How has the B3D Lab advanced since it first started at UTEP?

The B3D Lab first started at UTEP headed by Thomas Boland who is a Professor in the

Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at UTEP. The students have done

so much since it first began. Boland stated that when they first began with the whole process of

having research lab they only had two graduate students and the size of their research lab was the

size of a small office. After many years of having done research the lab has established about

thirteen students which ten of them are graduate and three are undergraduate students who work

in a research lab. The research lab takes up about the whole fourth floor in the engineering

building at the university. They have written publications a substantial amount since the students

first initiated into the research in the B3D lab. One of the many publications that were made is

found in the digital commons at UTEP that explains about printable hydrogels in order to create

a substrate for cell proliferation, and be applicable for people who suffer from mentioned

conditions. It also states the materials used to make the hydrogels which are alginate and gelatin.

The purpose of this research was to create a low cost wound care material that would promote

skin regeneration through the use of inkjet printing technology. (Cortez, Yanez, Boland, 2011).
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Ever since those publications there has been other ones that fall into the same research, those

include: Design and Realization of a Piezoelectric Ink Jet Head and Driver for Medical

Diagnostics in Remote Areas, Characterization of Printed Skin Equivalents, Molecular

Imprinting of Silica Microspheres on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, and many more. The B3D

lab will eventually advance into the new Research Building that will grow in 2019 and have

tissue engineering research being conducted.

Why dont we have a degree that has to do specifically with the study of tissue engineering

at UTEP?

Tissue Engineering has been growing for a long time to get where it is today and it has

established much breakthroughs since it first started. As stated in an article by Badylak and

Nerem (2010), Skin substitutes represented the earliest attempt at engineered tissues, and by the

1990s commercial development of these products had begun. The 1980s and 1990s were the "go-

go years" of tissue engineering. Unfortunately while I conducted my interview with Thomas

Boland I found that there are not many degrees in Tissue Engineering in many schools or

universities. The closest degree that he established that would fit in tissue engineering is

Biomedical Engineering. The University of Texas at El Paso has a PHD, Masters, and minor in

Biomedical Engineering. Boland stated that by next year Biomedical will have a bachelors

program at UTEP. Biomedical Engineering which is a subspecialty of tissue engineering has

made a great impact not only at UTEP having to do with the lab but also in the whole United

States. It states in the article, The Emergence of Biomedical Engineering in the United States

that In the 19th century and early 20th century it was especially through instrumentation, for
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measuring and imaging, that engineering influenced biomedicine. Nebeker (2001). Nebeker

also talks about how later after the early 20th century they started to make more innovative ways

using engineering and biology together to make more implantations devoted to health care along

the way.

Langer (1993) claims that organ and tissue failure are common in failing in human health

care. Is there any evidence of the amount of failures that have occurred?

Many occasions have occurred where organ or tissue failure has occurred in the United

States. The total national health care cost for these patients exceeds $400 billion per year. Every

year, people die from being on the donor list too long and they never get the organ they need in

order to survive. There are many other alternatives that people use instead of transplants like

surgical reconstruction but it has a long term effect. Langer (1993) In figure 1 shown below, you

can see the amount of people that are on the donor list, waiting list and the transplants that

actually happen. (Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 2017). As you can see that

there are many people in the waiting list that are trying to get a transplant.

Figure 1: WAITING VS. TRANSPLANTS VS. DONORS

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Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. (2017)

Also stated in Grose (2015) that there has been many other alternatives instead of using

human-made organs for transplants, most likely they will first be used for drug screening,

obviating the need for some animal and human trials. The other alternatives could be small-

molecule and biological drugs. It would be a high cost project but it could get done. How

patients react to small-molecule and biologic drugs is hard to predict, which is why those drugs

take, on average, 14 years to develop and have a failure rate greater than 95 percent. Grose

explains It can cost around $2 billion to successfully commercialize a new drug therapy. Grose

(2015). There are many alternatives to not have common failure in health care community but it

is still a substantial amount of failures. Another type of alternatives that we could use is 3D

printing. According to Griggs (2014) it states that For years now, medical researchers have been

reproducing human cells in laboratories by hand to create blood vessels, urine tubes, skin tissue

and other living body parts. But engineering full organs, with their complicated cell structures, is

much more difficult. This could help a substantial amount but the only thing they look for if its

going to affordable enough for the normal median person in the United States.

What if the B3D lab never existed at UTEP?

The last question to ask in the literary review is the one with the most impact because it

starts with what if?, that simple question changes the way of how UTEPs B3D lab wouldve

never been to be and how it has made an impact on the university. While conducting the

interview with Thomas Boland I asked him the simple question and there was so much that he

could tell me. Boland stated that there has been so many students who have graduated and have
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gone in done careers with the exact research that they are doing at the university. He was

explaining about how the research is connected with a company that allows the graduate students

to work there after graduation and have a secure job. They are in process of making another deal

with another company to send students off for more opportunity. Tissue engineering or

biomedical engineering has such a low percentage of job outlook at only 23% because it is a hard

degree to put your whole life into and it requires to be active in what youre doing. In 2014, it

stated that there only about 22,000 jobs in the United States for people to be employed. (Bureau

of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2015). The

B3D lab has made a huge economic impact to all the students who graduate after they are done.

The median pay for a biomedical engineer is $86,220 per year and that is with only a bachelors

degree. Not only does it have an economic impact but also an education impact because it helps

them build knowledge by working in the lab and learning about new things. It helps further their

education to become a well-rounded student at the university or even anywhere they decide to

go. Students can go all the way to a PHD in biomedical engineering and expand their knowledge

even more.
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References

Badylak, S. F., & Nerem, R. M. (2010). Progress in tissue engineering and regenerative

medicine. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of

America, 107(8), 3285-3286.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-

17 Edition, Biomedical Engineers, Retrieved at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-

and-engineering/biomedical-engineers.htm (visited April 16, 2017).

Burg, T., Cass, C. A. P., Groff, R., Pepper, M., & Burg, K. J. L. (2010). Building off-the-shelf

tissue-engineered composites. Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and

Engineering Sciences, 368(1917), 1839-1862.

Cortez, Polette; Yanez, Maria; and Boland*, Thomas, "Skin Cell Regeneration" (2011). COURI

Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2011. Paper 6. Retrieved from

http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/couri_abstracts_sum11/6

Griggs, B. (2014), "The next frontier in 3D printing: Human organs". Retrieved from

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/tech/innovation/3-d-printing-human-organs/

Grose, T. (2015). HUMAN SPARE PARTS. ASEE Prism, 24(6), 24-29. Retrieved from http://0-

www.jstor.org.lib.utep.edu/stable/43531217
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Langer, R., & Vacanti, J. P. (1993). Tissue engineering. Science, 260(5110), 920-926. Retrieved

from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2885618

Nebeker, F. (2001). The emergence of biomedical engineering in the united states. Icon, 7, 75-

94. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23786025

Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2017, from

https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/