NBC reports a team at Wake Forest University has used a combination of living cells and special gel to print living human body parts, including ears, muscles and jawbones.
Advertisement
The research received funding from the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a federally funded organisation that looks to apply regenerative medicine to those injured on the battlefield. But in the meantime, the San Diego firm is focused on selling 3-D-printed tissues for screening the toxicity of experimental drugs in the lab. “We’re trying to displace animal models”, said CEO Keith Murphy.
Future research will most likely lead to even more proficient 3D tissue printers that could aid human beings receive new body parts for implanting.
The Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System – or Itop – combines a bio-degradeable plastic which gives the structure and a water-based gel which contains the cells and encourages them to grow.
Dr. Atala’s team developed a system that deposits cell-laden hydrogels together with synthetic biodegradable polymers that impart mechanical strength, thereby overcoming previous limitations on the size, shape, structural integrity and vascularization of bioprinted tissue constructs.
If some of this seems familiar, that’s because scientists have been working with 3D printed organs for years. Further studies will measure longer-term outcomes. The 3D printing of body parts is a definite breakthrough in the field of medicine.
While printed tissue has been accomplished before, scientists have not figured out a way to nourish the tissues by allowing blood vessels to colonize them after they are transplanted.
While bioprinters have been used to print miniature or more simplistic replicas of organs – including brains and kidney tissues – so scientists can carry out research on them rather than on real ones (lab animals everywhere, rejoice), until now, no one’s been able to print something large, stable, and “alive” enough to act as a reliable transplant.
The study explores the capabilities of the new bioprinter for fabricating bone, cartilage and skeletal muscle using human, rabbit, rat and mouse cells.
A Texas startup called TeVido BioDevices is looking to 3-D-print skin and fat cells to create nipple grafts for breast cancer survivors undergoing reconstructive surgery.
But the new designs include a scaffolding design with channels allowing oxygen and nutrients to travel through the tissue.
The researchers also used the ITOP system and human stem cells to build jaw bone fragments, which the team notes were the size and shape required for human facial reconstruction.
They optimized the water-based “ink” that holds the cells so that it promotes cell health and growth and they printed a lattice of micro-channels throughout the structures. “We are printing all kinds of things”.
Human-sized ear implants looked like normal cartilage under the microscope, with blood vessels supplying the outer regions and no circulation in the inner regions (as in native cartilage).
Advertisement
This groundbreaking new method is not yet ready for clinical use, but its authors are sure that it won’t be long before it becomes widely applied in regenerative medicine.
