BioFabUSA’s acting executive director, Dean Kamen, announced the launch of BioFabUSA to a crowd of federal and local government dignitaries and industry leaders. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, Governor Chris Sununu, former Senator Kelly Ayotte, former Governor John Lynch, and Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas attended to show their non-partisan support.
Kamen, the entrepreneur behind the home dialysis machines, the DEKA Luke prosthetic arm, the Segway, and the new Coke fountain drink machines, discussed BioFabUSA’s plans to incorporate a mix of academic institutions and private enterprises to assist in the BioFabUSA’s mission. BioFabUSA will “make practical the large-scale manufacturing of engineered tissues and organs, and to develop a trained and ready workforce necessary for that manufacturing,” Kamen said.
As a member of the Manufacturing USA network, BioFabUSA will foster co-investment by industry, academia, and government to develop world-leading manufacturing technologies and capabilities with continuing efforts to help revitalize American manufacturing and incentivize companies to invest in new technology development in the United States. On December 19, 2017, the Department of Defense awarded $80 million in funding to the ARMI team that raised over $214 million in matching funds contributed by the initial commercial companies, academic institutions, and non-profits members of BioFabUSA.
As the Manufacturing USA institute focused on industrializing tissue fabrication, BioFabUSA will catalyze support for the industry through targeted investments in cell selection, culture and scale-up, biomaterial selection and scale-up, tissue process automation and monitoring, tissue maturing technologies and tissue preservation and transport. BioFabUSA plans to work with their members to develop a robust education and workforce-training component to prepare the next generation of American workers for participation in the tissue fabrication industry.
More information about BioFabUSA can be found at www.armiusa.org.