A team of scientists from the University of Edinburgh claim to have managed to synthesize a 3D printer that may one day allow them to manufacture living tissues.
3D-printed human tissues could be used for testing various drugs, or to create organs needed in surgeries and transplants.
Apparently, the innovative printer uses embryonic stem cells as ink, and works by forcing these cells to form uniform droplet sizes, with which scientists can form various types of tissues.
This is due to the fact that human embryonic stem cells or stem cells (hESCs, for short) can grow and become (regardless of their type), exactly what researchers want.
As reported in Scientific American, those wishing to force hESCs to develop into a certain cell type need only place them in an environment where the cells are exposed to the biological stimuli they need to follow the developmental path that has been determined for them.
According to the same source, the 3D printer used by the researchers has been very successful in printing uniformly sized droplets of cells.
Furthermore, the cells were more or less alive since they retained their ability to "talk" to different cell types.
In order to achieve this, the printer uses two bio-ink dispensers: one consisting of stem cells that allow them to exist in a rich and nutritious environment, and one that provides a simple and modest environment.
As soon as the printer starts dispensing these two layers of ink, droplets begin to form. Interestingly, about 95% of the cells printed this way were still very much alive 24 hours after the experiment, and 3 days later the percentage is still quite high at 86%.
“Building entire organs is the long-term goal, but it may be quite a ways off from where we are today,” says Utkan Demirci of the Department of Biomedicine at Harvard University Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
A detailed account of this study is published in the scientific journal Biofabrication on February 5.
