3D Printing a Rhino Horn

I just got off of a Skype call with one of the coolest people that I’ve ever had the good fortune to talk to.

Matthew Markus is the CEO and founder of Pembient, a company that just went through the Indie Bio accelerator program, that is 3D printing Rhino horns as a means of flooding the black market with indistinguishable copies of keratin-based horns. They hope that this will increase the supply of legal horns, thus driving the market to purchase these alternatives that are biologically and chemically the same as poached horns. In addition, their horn will reduce the willingness of poachers to risk jail and injury through poaching.

My conversation with Matthew ranged from DIYbio laboratories to bioprinting to cellular agriculture, recreating extinct species and future considerations for Pembient.

Currently he is in South Africa talking to wildlife NGOs while trying to obtain a small tissue sample from Ntombi, a wild black rhino. He is doing this so that Pembient can have a full black rhino sequence and release it to the greater scientific community. They hope that this will drive further collaborative research and enable scientists to study the black rhino genome for disease. In addition, it will help immensely in Pembient’s efforts to recreate an identical rhino horn.

Currently, my research in 3D bioprinting overlaps quite a bit with Pembient. Using the chemicals in perm kits and stereolithography, I’m reconstituting keratin into different shapes by first recycling hair, fingernails, chicken feathers, etc. and using it as a filament. Matthew told me that I was looking into the right things and gave me some tips on the best ways to go about patents in biology, applying to accelerator programs, and better potential sources of keratin.

I’m sure this won’t be the last time we talk, and I’m excited to see if my research can help Pembient out in any way possible. ER.