Ongoing research into the potential 3D printing of functioning human organs is one of today’s most exciting and potentially revolutionary areas of scientific study.
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A number of models of anatomical structures such as brains, hearts, bones, and arteries can be printed in a 3D format.
However, according to a report from the university, scientists have found ways to improve printing techniques for use with softer substances, and in turn may have brought forward a revolutionary future where 3D printed body parts are a common part of medicine.
Hard objects are created on 3-D printers by placing using thin layers of plastic or metal, slowly constructing the object. When 3D printing with soft materials, this danger is a real problem. Printing each layer requires sturdy support from the layers below, so printing with soft materials like gels has been limited.
“Essentially, we print one gel inside of another gel, which allows us to accurately position the soft material as it’s being printed, layer-by-layer”, said Feinberg. The device works by depositing layers of material, just as ordinary printers lay down ink, except 3D printers can also lay down flat layers on top of each other to build 3D objects. Their method involved the use of a granular hydrogel named Carbopol EDT 2020, a product much like common hand sanitiser, to function as a kind of scaffold for the structures themselves-allowing them to be “suspended” seemingly in mid-air.
The new 3D printing has taken off, with researchers printing all sorts of rigid objects that can be used to replace the originals at a fraction of the cost, but new research is finding the way to print things like internal tissues that are soft and pliable, and the hope is that it can lead to using 3D print technology to fix or replace human organs.
A team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, led by biomedical engineer Adam Feinberg, have developed a process that surrounds the tissue with a material with the consistency of mayonnaise to support the tissue during printing. Even when researchers were successful in bioprinting soft materials, it came with a prohibitively expensive price tag: most bioprinters cost somewhere around 0,000, making the technology all but inaccessible to a handful of research institutions with the funds and knowhow to operate these state of the art machines. The team was able to accomplish this on affordable, consumer-level 3D printers by leveraging open-sourced hardware and software.
Feinberg concludes: “Not only is the cost low, but by using open-source software, we have access to fine-tune the print parameters, optimize what we’re doing and maximize the quality of what we’re printing”. “It has really enabled us to accelerate development of new materials and innovate in this space. And we are also contributing back by releasing our 3D printer designs under an open-source licence”.
A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Science Advances.
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The next step for the team is to incorporate live cells into the printed materials in order to create functional heart muscle.
