The future of printing: organs

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?