Systemic Bio Accelerates Drug Development in 3D Using Hydrogels and Human Cells
The development of 3D bioprinting is opening new frontiers in medicine, not only in regenerative medicine but also in drug discovery and development. In this context, Systemic Bio, a subsidiary of 3D Systems, has emerged as a key player in creating vascularized human tissues using high-precision 3D bioprinting techniques. The company aims to transform how medical treatments are designed, tested, and optimized by integrating relevant human data into predictive models to speed up the development of new drugs. We spoke with Taci Pereira, CEO of Systemic Bio, to learn more about their platform, the potential of additive manufacturing in therapeutic development, and their vision for the future of tissue-based, 3D-printed medicine.
3DN: Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your connection to 3D printing?
My name is Taci Pereira, and I’m originally from Curitiba, Brazil. I moved to the United States at the age of 18 to study bioengineering at Harvard, driven by a desire to contribute to the development of new cancer treatments and help doctors around the world reach more patients. At Harvard, I discovered tissue engineering through the work of Professor David Mooney. I was fascinated by the potential of biomaterials and tissue engineering, whether in regenerative medicine, drug delivery, or creating better models of human physiology and pathology.
Taci Pereira (Right)
This interest led me to join Allevi, a young bioprinting company, as a junior bioengineer. I spent countless hours in the lab learning how to use extrusion-based 3D printers to create a variety of tissues, from bones to tumors. Being part of a small team, I took on many roles, including R&D, marketing, customer support, and operations. Today, the company has over 500 clients worldwide and has been featured in more than 100 publications. Three years later, I became the chief scientific officer and helped lead the company to its acquisition by 3D Systems.
After the acquisition, I stayed on to lead the new 3D Systems division. This gave me the opportunity to work with industrial-grade 3D bioprinting technology, learn how a public company operates, and explore new modalities such as light-based printing. About a year later, we launched Systemic Bio.
3DN: What is Systemic Bio? How did the idea to start the company come about?
Systemic Bio is a subsidiary of 3D Systems created to apply its industrial bioprinting technology to drug discovery and development. While 3D bioprinting is often associated with regenerative medicine or implantable tissues, it also has tremendous potential to improve how we study diseases and develop new therapies by testing them in functional human tissue models.
The idea for Systemic Bio emerged in 2018 when I observed the rise of AI and machine learning in biotechnology, particularly in companies like Insitro. I admired Daphne Koller’s work and closely followed how computational tools were being applied to biology. But I noticed a major gap: AI models are only as good as the data they are trained on. If we rely on preclinical models that often fail to predict human outcomes, AI will only accelerate failures. This can save time, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem.
That’s when I had the idea to create an in silico platform based on human-relevant data from 3D bioprinted tissues. To do this, I needed scalable and reproducible bioprinting technology, which didn’t yet exist. Through the acquisition of Allevi, I gained access to 3D Systems’ decades of experience in high-throughput additive manufacturing. We then founded Systemic Bio in August 2022 with $15 million in funding to produce large-scale bioprinted tissues and generate data that enables better decision-making in drug development.
3DN: Can you tell us more about the 3D bioprinting technology used by Systemic Bio?
We use industrial-grade, light-based bioprinting technology developed by 3D Systems. This allows us to create vascularized hydrogel structures with high resolution and performance. The quality of the scaffolds is carefully controlled, and they are functionalized and seeded with cells to model human tissues. Our platform can produce thousands of consistent tissue models each month within a quality management system, supporting both internal R&D and partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.
3DN: What are the advantages of additive manufacturing for drug discovery and development?
Additive manufacturing offers key advantages for drug discovery. First, it allows the creation of biomimetic structures with complex, nature-inspired geometries that are difficult to achieve with traditional methods. Second, drug discovery involves a wide range of mechanisms of action and disease models, so flexibility is essential. Finally, it lets us easily adjust models and cell types without changing the hardware, simply by updating the design file.
This modularity makes the system cost-effective and highly customizable. Compared to traditional methods like injection molding, it also enables faster iteration and rapid prototyping, which is crucial for optimizing tissue models. The main challenge today is ensuring consistency and reproducibility at scale, which is exactly one of the problems Systemic Bio is working to solve.
3DN: How do you see the future of 3D printing in the medical field?
Bioprinting is poised to transform medicine in multiple ways. In the near term, we are entering the era of tissue therapy, a new class of treatments where, instead of designing an entire organ, we can bioprint functional tissue constructs that enhance or support organ function. These tissues are easier to produce, can be tailored for specific applications, and can also serve as advanced drug delivery systems.
At Systemic Bio, our goal is to bioprint millions of vascularized tissues that can be used to generate computational models of human organs and systems. These tissues form the basis of large-scale datasets, which are libraries of different therapeutic modalities tested across various tissue types and biological contexts. By labeling each tissue response with key therapy attributes such as structure, dose, and mechanism of action, we can train AI and machine learning models to predict safety and efficacy in multiple use cases, including liver toxicity, cardiac safety, or tumor response.
Imagine being able to introduce a new therapy into this system and obtain an organ-by-organ safety profile along with disease-specific efficacy predictions, all based on human-relevant data. That is the future we are working toward. We want to create human-based predictive models that can dramatically accelerate drug development and reduce drug-related risks.
In the longer term, the field continues to pursue its most ambitious goal: bioprinting fully functional transplantable organs. We are finally entering an era where key factors are aligning, including industrial-scale bioprinting, advanced automation, and regulatory support from the FDA for alternatives to animal testing. Achieving this future requires continued focus on reproducibility, scalability, and clinically meaningful validation. If we succeed, bioprinting will not just complement medicine; it will redefine it.
The Systemic Bio team
