3D printers are changing the way we build our cars and homes Even our food. And thanks in part to scientists at Stanford University, they’ve been able to change the way transplant patients get new organs.
Mark Skyler Scott and his team of bioengineers have developed a technology that allows them to do just that 3D printing on living heart tissue. The goal is to one day have the ability to print important parts of the heart, like the valves and ventricles, that can actually grow with the patient.
One in 100 children in the United States is born with a heart defect. Although they can perform implants, these implants can be rejected by the body for up to 20 or 30 years afterward. Bioprinting a new organ using the patient’s own cells can reduce these cases.
Stanford scientists can write vascular networks directly into 3D-printed tissue.
Stanford University / Andrew Broadhead
“It’s ambitious, but we think a lot of the building blocks to start a project like this are there,” Skylar Scott told CNET. Watch the video above to see how the printing works.
This technique is an example bio print, a process that uses living cells to create organ-like structures. Modern bioprinting is not a new concept, but it is generally a slow process. It usually requires printing one cell at a time. Even printing 1,000 cells per second, it would take more than a thousand years to make a single human heart.
Skyler Scott and his team developed a way to speed up the process, by printing with groups of thousands of cells called organelles. “We take millions of these and condense them into what is essentially mayonnaise from human stem cells, which we can then print through a printer.”
The technology is an example of bioprinting, a process that uses living cells to create organ-like structures
Stanford University / Andrew Broadhead
Once the cells are printed, they take on the general shape of a tissue within which networks of blood vessels can then be printed.
The team has already printed a tube-like structure similar to a human vein, that can actually pump out fluid on its own. The next step will be to print a larger structure, such as a functional chamber that can be grafted onto an existing core.
Skylar Scott said he believes a heart valve printed using this technology could be implanted in a human patient in as little as five years, though we’re likely at least two decades away from a fully printed heart.
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