Systemic Bio Speeds 3D Drug Discovery with Human Cell Hydrogels

The development of 3D bioprinting is opening new frontiers in medicine, not only for regenerative therapies but also for drug discovery and development. In this space, Systemic Bio, a subsidiary of 3D Systems, has emerged as a leading company in creating vascularized human tissues using high-precision 3D bioprinting techniques. The company aims to transform how treatments are designed, tested, and optimized by integrating relevant human data into predictive models to accelerate the delivery of new medicines to market. 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 explain your connection to 3D printing?

My name is Taci Pereira. I’m from Curitiba, Brazil, and moved to the United States at 18 to study bioengineering at Harvard with the goal of contributing to new cancer treatments and helping doctors reach more patients worldwide. At Harvard I discovered tissue engineering through the work of Professor David Mooney and became fascinated by the potential of biomaterials and tissue engineering—whether for regenerative medicine, drug delivery, or building more representative models of human physiology and pathology.

That 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 bone to tumor models. Being part of a small team meant wearing many hats across R&D, marketing, customer support, and operations. Over time the company grew to serve hundreds of customers globally and was cited in numerous publications. After three years I became head scientist and helped guide the company toward acquisition by 3D Systems.

Following the acquisition I stayed on to lead the new 3D Systems division. That experience exposed me to industrial-grade bioprinting technologies, public company operations, and new modalities such as light-based printing. About a year later we launched Systemic Bio.

3DN: What is Systemic Bio and how did the company come about?

Systemic Bio is a 3D Systems subsidiary created to apply industrial bioprinting technology to drug discovery and development. While bioprinting is often associated with regenerative medicine and implantable tissues, it also holds enormous promise for improving how we study disease and develop therapies by testing them in functional human tissue models.

The idea for Systemic Bio began in 2018 as I watched the rise of AI and machine learning in biotech. While computational tools are powerful, they are only as good as the data used to train them. If AI is trained on preclinical models that poorly predict human outcomes, it may accelerate failures rather than solve the underlying problem. That realization motivated me to build an in silico platform grounded in human-relevant data generated from 3D-bioprinted tissues. To do that required scalable, reproducible bioprinting—a capability that didn’t yet exist at the scale we envisioned.

Thanks to the Allevi acquisition and decades of 3D Systems’ expertise in high-throughput additive manufacturing, we were able to move forward. Systemic Bio was founded in August 2022 with a $15 million investment to produce bioprinted tissues at scale and generate the data needed to make better drug development decisions.

3DN: Can you explain the 3D bioprinting technology Systemic Bio uses?

We use industrial-grade, light-based bioprinting technology developed by 3D Systems. This approach enables us to fabricate vascularized hydrogel structures with high resolution and consistent performance. Scaffolds are precisely controlled, functionalized, and cellularized to model human tissues. Our platform is designed to produce thousands of consistent tissue models each month within a quality management system, supporting both internal R&D and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.

3DN: What advantages does additive manufacturing bring to drug discovery and development?

Additive manufacturing offers several key advantages for drug discovery. First, it enables the creation of biomimetic structures and complex geometries that are difficult or impossible to produce with traditional methods. Second, drug discovery requires flexibility across many mechanisms of action and disease models; additive manufacturing offers that adaptability. Third, changing a tissue model or cell type is often as simple as updating the design file, allowing rapid iteration without retooling hardware.

This modularity makes the approach cost-effective and highly customizable. Compared to conventional methods like injection molding, bioprinting supports faster prototyping and model optimization. The primary challenge today is ensuring consistency and reproducibility at large scale—exactly the challenge Systemic Bio aims to address.

3DN: How do you see the future of 3D printing in medicine?

Bioprinting is poised to transform medicine on multiple fronts. In the near term, we are entering an era of tissue therapies: rather than printing whole organs, we can produce functional tissue constructs that augment or support organ function. These tissues are easier to produce, can be tailored to specific applications, and may serve as advanced drug delivery systems.

At Systemic Bio our goal is to bioprint millions of vascularized tissues that feed into computational models of human organs and systems. These tissues will form the basis of large-scale datasets—libraries of therapeutic modalities tested across diverse tissue types and biological contexts. By annotating each tissue response with key therapy attributes (structure, dose, mechanism of action, etc.), we can train AI and machine learning models to predict safety and efficacy across use cases such as liver toxicity, cardiac safety, or tumor response.

Imagine introducing a new therapy into such a system and receiving an organ-by-organ safety profile and disease-specific efficacy prediction, all based on human-relevant data. That is the future we are building toward: human-based predictive models that can dramatically accelerate drug development and lower clinical risk.

Longer term, the field continues to pursue the ambitious goal of bioprinting fully transplantable, functional organs. Progress is advancing as industrial-scale bioprinting, advanced automation, and regulatory support—including interest from agencies like the FDA—begin to converge. Achieving that future will require continued focus on reproducibility, scale, and clinically meaningful validation. If we succeed, bioprinting will do more than complement medicine—it will redefine it.

3DN: Any final words for our readers?

Be patient—this work takes time. When I began in bioprinting nearly a decade ago, predictions about printing whole organs in five to ten years were common. Although we are closer today, biotechnology progresses on a different and often slower timescale. Advances are real, but they are incremental and complex.

We should be ambitious while remaining realistic: focus on building technologies that work and generating reproducible, valuable data that bring us closer to long-term goals. The promise of bioprinting is enormous, but fulfilling it will demand perseverance, rigor, and a sustained commitment to solving the right problems.

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*All photos: Systemic Bio

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