Industrial + Specialty Printing

In the beginning, simple skin tissue, muscle, and short stretches of blood vessels will be made.

By Gail Flower

Have you noticed the articles on 3D printing recently? One captured my attention from the February 18, 2010 edition of The Economist about a machine that prints organs or body parts.
Here’s what it said in a nutshell. Transplant surgeons wait a long time for an organ transplant from a suitable donor. The patient cannot afford to wait as long as it takes. Making organs to order would be helpful. And by using commercial 3D bio-printers for manufacturing human tissue and organs, the futuristic promise may be coming a bit closer.

Organovo, a San Diego-based company that specializes in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering automation from Melbourne, Australia, have created such a machine. The first production models will soon be delivered to research groups to study ways to produce tissue and organs for repair and replacement.

In the beginning, simple skin tissue, muscle, and short stretches of blood vessels will be made, according Keith Murphy, Organovo’s CEO, and these are for research only. It will take at least five years of research to possibly produce larger, more complex body parts. Because the machines can make branched tubes, the hope is to create networks of blood vessels needed to sustain larger organs.

How does it work? The 3D bio-printer works like an inkjet printer, but with a third dimension. Small clusters of cells are placed next to each other, and eventually fuse and organize themselves. Different techniques are being explored to condition the cells to mature into functioning body parts. Look for more news to come on this medical application of printing.