3D Printing: Getting Organ-ized
Organ printing visualisation. Source: http://www.newscientist.com
‘Two kidneys, a heart, and an earlobe to go, please.’
A phrase that may become commonplace in the near future. Perhaps not in these exact words – it’s not fast food – but it’s extraordinarily satisfying all the same.
You may have heard of 3D printing, but have you heard of organ printing? It is the ability to print (i.e. make replicas of) fully-functional, living organs from scratch. The principle is simple yet brilliant: cells suspended in a liquid are passed through a printer-like device, which first lays out a template called ‘bio-paper’, then injects it with clusters of cells called ‘bio-ink’, and presto, we have a cell print. The process is repeated over and over again, creating numerous layers of cell prints until a proper, three-dimensional organ is created. Think of it like clay pottery with living tissue and a cooler name.
The whole process belongs to the field of regenerative medicine. This new branch of medicine deals with the restoration of damaged or faulty tissues and organs, which are regenerated from an individual’s cell samples, eliminating the chances of transplant rejection, while making their availability practically limitless.
In the future we may not need to wait years for scarce transplant organs. We will be able to grow our own spare parts and use them in case they are damaged. We may even replace them at given intervals, circumventing the aging process and increasing quality of life, all without the use of disposable clones.
In the TEDtalk below, surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrates an early-stage experiment that could someday solve the organ-donor problem: a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney.
To close, here’s a little teaser from a blockbuster to identify the science in science fiction.
[...] real challenge in tissue engineering lies in the design and manufacture of materials that mimic the complex, hierarchical [...]
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