What are Bioprinting Synthetic Organs?
"Bioprinting is a new area of research and engineering that involves printing devices that deposit biological material. The long-term goal is that the technology could be used to create replacement organs or even entire organisms from raw biological materials."Organs printing is a computer-aided layer by layer additive biofabrication of human organs. Tissue fusion or directed tissue self-assembly is a fundamental principle of bioprinting.
“Inkjet bioprinting creates bone and muscle” Filed in archive Biotech by george elvin on December 28, 2006
“Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have developed bone and muscle cells using a custom-designed ink-jet printer. The team has succeeded in bioprinting from adult stem cells from mice.
For years, reports Technology Review, tissue engineers have used souped-up printers, and in some cases off-the-shelf models, to print "bio-inks." These inks consist of anything from proteins to individual cells printed in microscopic patterns. By printing layer upon layer of cell patterns, scientists may one day be able to "print" whole tissues or organs for replacement therapies. (photo bioprinting.jp)”
"The "bioprinting" technique developed by Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometers in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid, says an article in New Scientist:
Droplets placed next to one another will flow together and FUSE , forming layers, rings or other shapes, depending on how they were deposited. To print 3D structures, Forgacs and his colleagues alternate layers of supporting gel, dubbed "biopaper", with the bioink droplets. To build tubes that could serve as blood vessels, for instance, they lay down successive rings containing muscle and endothelial cells, which line our arteries and veins. "We can print any desired structure, in principle," Forgacs told the meeting.
Now Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster.
"When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ."
Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. "After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner," says Forgacs. (photo University of Utah)"
