marielikestodraw: shinywen: scienceyoucanlove: 3D printing…
3D printing with stem cells could lead to printable organs
A potentially breakthrough 3D-printing process using human stem cells could be the precursor to printing organs from a patient’s own cells.
Some day in the future, when you need a kidney transplant, you may get a 3D-printed organ created just for you. If scientists are able to achieve that milestone, they may look back fondly at a breakthrough printing process pioneered by researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland in collaboration with Roslin Cellab, a stem cell technology company.
The printer creates 3D spheroids using delicate embryonic cell cultures floating in a “bio ink” medium. They end up looking like little bubbles. Each droplet can contain as few as five stem cells. Basically, this comes down to the printer “ink” being stem cells rather than plastic or another material.
Dr. Will Shu is part of the research team working on the project. “In the longer term, we envisage the technology being further developed to create viable 3D organs for medical implantation from a patient’s own cells, eliminating the need for organ donation, immune suppression, and the problem of transplant rejection,” Shu said in a release from Heriot-Watt.
Perhaps most importantly, the stem cells survived the printing process and remained viable. Shu says this is the first time human embryonic stem cells have been 3D printed. Printing out organs may be far down the line, but it’s just one potential application. The method could also be used to print out human tissue for drug testing.
The research results have just been published in Biofabrication under the title “Development of a valve-based cell printer for the formation of human embryonic stem cell spheroid aggregates.”
While things like 3D-printed Mobius bacon strips and crazy pointy shoes are a lot of fun, it’s applications like this that could really turn 3D printing into a world changer.
I don’t think this is “could be” scenario. This IS happening right now, and we absolutely will be using 3D-printing technology in this way, probably sooner than we even expect.
Fucking hell science is amazing and I want to squish and hug those people so hard for being so amazing ok.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/67847701719.
Tags: reblogging because one follower might be interested in this.
