By: Josh Leach
What if
replacing damaged organs was as easy as printing off an assignment for
school? The new craze for 3D printers
has transformed the field of engineering.
Prototypes can be easily and cheaply manufactured using plastic or
silicon. However, this technology may
take a leap forward, using cells as the ink and printing human body tissue.
Scientists
have been attempting to grow organs in the lab for a long time. Now, they are much closer to realizing this
dream. James O’Toole, a writer for CNN,
explains how the process works: “The process starts when scientists grow human
cells from biopsies or stem cells. They then feed the cells into special
printers that can arrange them three-dimensionally by cell type in the way that
they'd appear in the human body.
Once the cells have been printed in the right arrangement,
they begin to signal to one another, fuse and organize themselves into a
collective system.” Growing tissue is
not overly difficult, but creating functional, complex organs is something else
entirely.
The
transition from tissue sample to an organ that can be donated to a patient
presents a new list of challenges.
Melissa Davey from The Guardian, a news website, writes, “Until now a
major barrier to them moving from printing tiny sheets of tissue to entire 3D
organs is that they hadn’t figured out how to develop the blood vessels that
provide cells with nutrients and oxygen, and allow them to excrete waste.” Scientists are finally figuring out how to
use chemicals to promote blood vessel growth.
Josh Kurosz, a senior at Seckman, said, “That sounds awesome!” Others are more cautious. “If it works that’s great, but I won’t be the
first one to have it tried on,” said Mr. Gotsch, a substitute teacher at
Seckman. In the past, lab grown tissue
has never lasted very long and has been unable to form three-dimensional
structures without vessels to provide nourishment. Now, scientists can break past this barrier.
Three-dimensional
printing may also contribute to the medical field by improving how surgeons
train. Tia Ghose, a writer for the Live
Science website, explains, “Surgeons traditionally used detailed MRI scans to
visualize heart defects prior to going into the operating room. But when
Matthew Bramlet (shown here), a pediatric cardiologist at the University of
Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, discovered that a research institution
nearby had a high-quality 3D printer, he wondered whether those MRI scans could
be translated into 3D replicas of the heart.”
Making accurate models of organs is a game changer for surgeons. Child organs present a number of difficulties
to surgeons due to their small size, and young cadavers are in lesser
supply. As a result, surgeons often lack
experience operating on children, but these new models will help a lot.
This
technology is transforming many fields.
Engineers make cost effective prototypes to test their designs. Surgeons train on models with never before
seen accuracy. Scientists may soon print
functional organs in a lab, so they can be transplanted into patients. Who knows what other applications exist for
3D printing?
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