The future of medicine

As we look up in the sky, we have always dreamed to explore far distant planets in search of new life. In the near future, we will be gearing up towards long term journeys on the moon and in deep space for a first manned mission to Mars. For these missions bioprinting is considered as an emergency technology to deal with critical injuries as it will not be possible to turn around and go back to Earth. Furthermore, aging in Space is remarkably faster than on Earth. Thus, the use of Space as an accelerator of ageing on Earth due to the combined effect of microgravity and cosmic radiation can be of importance to discover new therapies for life in our planet. Here, we introduce how bioprinting can be used in the future in space to provide new tools for emergency medical treatments and to study ageing.

Lorenzo Moroni is the scientific director of MERLN, biomedical engineer by training and worldleading expert in biofabrication technologies for regenerative medicine and advanced in vitro models

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent degenerative joint disorder characterized by the gradual deterioration of articular cartilage where joint replacement is often needed. Despite the diverse patient characteristics, clinical practice uses a one-size-fits-all approach.

Dr. Cillero-Pastor is associate professor and principal investigator at MERLN (Maastricht University) where she develops and applies multimodal (molecular) omics technologies in combination with advanced in vitro models to study novel drugs and molecular classifiers for patient phenotyping in the context of ageing. Her research focuses on the molecular characterization of OA joint tissues at single-cell resolution for better patient classification and personalized medicine.