3D Printing : Future Of Organ Transplant.

3D Printing : Is This The Future Of Organ Transplant?

While home and office printers don’t seem to have improved in quality since the mid-90s, the world of 3D printing is alive with innovation and potential. The technology has entered the world of medicine through 3D printed devices like prosthetics and surgical instruments, and researchers are now testing out bio-ink as a way of printing vital organs, bones and cartilage.

Harvesting stem cells from a transplant recipient and printing them into a replacement organ could help bypass complications associated with organ transplant.

Unlike a traditional 2D printer, which prints on a flat surface, 3D printers add another dimension – depth. Known as additive manufacturing, 3D printings distributes different materials up and down, left and right, back and forward, to print an item layer by layer.

Bioprinting refers to 3D printers which deposit layers of biomaterial to build complex bodily structures like skin, bones and even corneas. The requisite cells are taken from a patient – or, if this isn’t possible, adult stem cells can be used – and cultivated into a bioink to ‘print’ an organic object. These are typically held together through some sort of dissolvable gel or collagen scaffold which can support the cells and mould them into the correct shape.

Printing body parts may well be the next step in organ transplantation – harvesting stem cells from a transplant recipient and printing them into a replacement organ could help bypass complications associated with organ transplant such as long waits for a suitable donor or immune rejection of the new organ.

Hearts: beating the functionality challenge

A group of scientists at the American Friends of Tel Aviv University have 3D printed a fully-vascularised heart using fat tissue cells from a donor.

The fat cells were partially cultured and reprogrammed into heart cells. The entire heart structure is present with all cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers. The structure was based on medical images of the donor patient’s own heart.

The technology is still in its early stages – the heart the researchers have printed is the size of a rabbit’s heart and is unable to pump any blood. The researchers hope to test these printed hearts in animals once they have worked on rescaling the organs and getting them to beat.