On Friday, July 28, 2017, ARMI hosted a grand opening that brought together potential members from industry, academia, and government to celebrate the opening of their new headquarters facilities in the Manchester Millyard in Manchester, NH. Dean Kamen, the acting Executive Director of the BioFabUSA institute, read President Donald Trump’s letter congratulating the new institute on its grand opening. The letter states, “Together with existing initiatives in government and the private sector, this institute will lead to life-saving next-generation solutions to some of our greatest medical challenges.”
BioFabUSA joined the Manufacturing USA network in December 2016 as the seventh Department of Defense lead institute and twelfth overall. With a $80 million investment from the Department of Defense and over $214 million contributed by a consortium of over 100 commercial companies, academic institutions, non-profits and state government organizations, BioFabUSA strives to pioneer a new era in tissue fabrication. The new institute is led by Dean Kamen, the entrepreneur behind the home dialysis machines, the DEKA Luke prosthetic arm, the Segway and the new Coke fountain drink machines.
From its headquarters at the Manchester Millyard, BioFabUSA’s mission is to catalyze the U.S. research and commercial ecosystems to bring forward tissue fabrication manufacturing technology 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. The institute plans to work towards developing a robust education and workforce-training component to prepare the next generation of American workers for participation in the tissue fabrication industry in partnership with federal, state and local public educational institutions, private educational institutions and relevant non-profits.
The Manufacturing USA network is a bipartisan program that unites industry, academia, and government to co-invest in the development of 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. With continued support from all levels of the government and industry, BioFabUSA and the other Manufacturing USA institute will continue to “turn groundbreaking ideas into revolutionary new products.”