On February 5, the Laboratory of Regenerative Technologies and Tissue Engineering of the NRU MEPhI Institute of Biomedicine and the Rosatom Scientific Institute from Troitsk was opened at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRU MEPhI) with the support of the Rosatom State Corporation. It is planned that in the laboratory, scientists and students in a biofactory will grow biocompatible equivalents of blood vessels from patients' own cells.
The biofactory, also developed by Rosatom scientists, allows the cultivation of various body tissues, including blood vessels. Equipping the laboratory will allow scientists to work on modeling the processes of tissue cultivation at the micro level, which in the future will help create full-fledged body tissues on a real scale.888 When opening the laboratory, Vladimir Shevchenko, Rector of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, noted that history is being made within these walls that justifies all engineering and physical activities, perhaps to the highest degree – fruits these activities serve to save lives. "All the fantastic progress in biomedicine and life sciences in general over the past decades has been associated with the penetration of physical research methods, diagnostics, and analyses into them – these are magnetic resonance imaging, lasers, and other high-tech devices. I would like to express my hope that new approaches and new ideas will be born within these walls, which will make it possible to overcome diseases that are considered incurable today," said the rector of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI.
"We live in an amazing time when technology is changing very quickly, it is difficult for young people to even imagine that there was a time without the Internet. Therefore, it is very important that the university trains personnel taking into account the technologies that are only developing today. The sooner we adapt the training programs to this, the sooner we will achieve real results in such laboratories," said Dmitry Baydarov, Director of the Department of Support for New Businesses at Rosatom State Corporation.
Oncologist surgeon at I. M. First Moscow Medical State University. Igor Reshetov Sechenova believes that the emergence of such laboratories, where interdisciplinary interaction and the formation of promising "over-the-horizon" technologies are very important, since the processes of testing a biomedical product are much faster if at the same time there is a dialogue with its designers.
Vladislav Parfenov, head of the Center for Three-dimensional Bioprinting at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, emphasized that in the laboratory students will be able to conduct experiments and implement their wildest ideas, create working technologies that will be introduced into clinical practice in the near future, and the products of these technologies will be able to enter the everyday life of every person in our country.: "Modern medicine is very interdisciplinary, and nothing is done there without mathematics, engineering, and genetics. Our laboratory is just about that, here the key technologies of the future will be combined." The guests of the event were also shown the operating room, where surgeons perform operations to implant the equivalent of a blood vessel.
After the laboratory was opened at the Boiling Point of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, a Strategic session "New Horizons of Rosatom State Corporation: Towards Technological Leadership in Nuclear Medicine and Biomedical Technologies" was held. Opening the session, Vladimir Shevchenko stressed that technological leadership does not mean the ability to do everything from scratch, but you always need to understand in which areas you need to have competencies covering the entire technological chain – that is, the competencies of an operator, a repairman, a developer, and an innovator. And biotechnology, according to Vladimir Shevchenko, is just such an area. Our citizens, the rector of MEPhI confidently stated, should have access to world-class medicine.
Dmitry Baydarov noted during the session that no one needs R&D for the sake of R&D, but research that solves fundamental scientific problems and allows them to look "beyond the horizon" into tomorrow is important. Already today, in his opinion, it is necessary to think about the distant future.
Ksenia Tagirova, Deputy Director of the Development and International Business Unit, Director of Medicine at Rosatom State Corporation, presented to the audience the Strategy for the development of the medical sector of the State Corporation. She stressed that in order to achieve technological leadership in such niches as the creation of radiopharmaceuticals, therapeutic and diagnostic medical equipment used in nuclear medicine, Rosatom places a key bet on the development of scientific and human resources, interaction with the medical and scientific community, and leading specialized universities in the country. Sergey Surov, Director of Radionuclide Products and Nuclear Medicine at Rosatom Nauka JSC, spoke about the scientific and technological projects of Rosatom Nauka, among whose successful projects are the production of actinium-225 (which is scheduled to be launched in 2027), radium–223 and iridium-based cable sources-192. Sergey Surov stressed that these plants will solve the problems of import substitution, and the technologies and techniques created for them will help create the production of tomorrow, when it is necessary to start producing other pharmaceutical products based on them. Anatoly Myalitsin, Director of Specialized Medical Equipment at Rosatom RDS, spoke about Rosatom RDS, which performs the functions of an integrator of medical products at nuclear power plants. In his speech, Anatoly Myalitsin gave examples of a large number of medical devices manufactured by Rosatom enterprises and stressed that the State Corporation was waiting for MEPhI graduates who would be able to develop and optimize their production.
Alexander Garmash, Director of the Engineering Physics Institute of Biomedicine at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, recalled that physicists had a huge impact on the development of medicine, in particular, without the discoveries of X-ray, there would have been no tomography, and without the discoveries of Rutherford, nuclear medicine. "The future of medicine lies at the interdisciplinary interface of science and technology," he noted.
