Meet the biologist hacking 3D printed cancer-fighting viruses

16 Oct 2014
Michael Newington Gray

"I'm trying to make 3D printed cancer-fighting viruses" declares Autodesk's Andrew Hessel, speaking at WIRED2014 in London.

A cell biologist and genetic biologist, Hessel states that "practically no-one understands what I do", and as such, he is equally as happy to accept the informal description of biohacker.

The world he works in is "an invisible world to most people" purely because of the very tiny scale of the physics he works with.

Hessel works with cells, which he describes as "the most complex machine in the known universe" that are amazing because they do "fantastic computations all day long, run on sugars and last a long time". Thanks to DNA sequencing, we are starting to be able to decode our cells and the more he sees of cell architecture, the more he sees the similarities between them and the computers that we ourselves have built. The body, he adds, is made up of trillions of cells and is therefore "a very complex machine and we are going to be decoding it for a very long time".

Hessel though, is focussed on looking at the data activity that happens within each of these tiny cellular machines -- in particular he is interested in viruses. He describes these as "the apps of the biological world".

While Autodesk is primarily known for its CAD products, Hessel works within its experimental Pier 39 facility in what he says is "the first life science lab ever created by a software company". It is "a lab to study labs" and it has really been exploring digital biology, which is what Hessel thinks is the thing that will allow him to print the viruses he believes will be able to fight cancer.

The software and printers he works with can take data and turn it into DNA, or even viruses. "Now i just have to swap out the design to start making cancer-fighting viruses," he says. It is these viruses that Hessel is putting his hopes in. "Cancer cells are broken," he explains. "These viruses, when they infect a cancer cell, hack it, take over it and then take over more cancer cells." "I think cancer is actually a fairly easy disease," he states boldly. The medicines we currently use to treat cancer are highly toxic, but are getting better and more targeted all the time. He believes firmly that the ultimate answer lies in creating highly personalised medicines, which are necessary because "it's your cells infecting your body".

The number of new drugs produced per billion spent is actually decreasing at a rate that is exactly the opposite of Moore's law, but by producing personalised medicine, the need for clinical trials -- the most expensive and time-consuming part of producing drugs -- is no longer relevant.

When Hessel first printed viruses, it took him about two weeks and cost about $1,000. "The cost is falling really quickly," he says. "I think in the next year and a half i should be able to make a virus for about a dollar."