There is an opinion that in the near future this technology will make it possible to get rid of donor organs by completely replacing them with "printed" ones. Only today there is one significant problem with 3D printing of organs. And it lies in the printing technology itself. And it was this problem that a group of scientists from Switzerland was able to solve not so long ago.
How do organs print?
In order to understand what the difficulty is when printing organs, let's see how this technology works. If you do not go into technical details, then for the most part during 3D printing (and it does not matter what you print - a plastic part or an organ), the final shape is created by layering the material. This allows the creation of organs with a complex internal structure. But the main drawback in this case is time. It takes an unreasonable amount of time and resources to print one organ.
However, there is another method - volumetric bioprinting, which allows the formation of an organ simultaneously throughout the entire volume. The method consists in the fact that a special "mixture" of cells and fixing material is alternately fed from different sides with a laser with different penetrating ability from a special projector, which "shows" only a certain part of the 3D model, which can be seen from the "point of view" of this projector. The tissue hardens in the projector beam. This happens until the entire future organ is "highlighted".
A schematic representation of how volumetric printing takes place.
A team of scientists from the Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices (LAPD) in Switzerland said that using this method allowed them to create complex tissue shapes in a biocompatible hydrogel with stem cells. Moreover, organs with a developed circulatory system can be formed from these tissues. But the most amazing thing here is that the printing process takes only a few seconds. 3D printing can create new, functional organs in a short period of time.
Scientists have already successfully (and most importantly, quickly) printed tissues of the heart valve, meniscus, pulmonary artery and femur. What's more, printed tissues and organs can also be used to create interconnected structures like the liver and gallbladder.
Promotional video:
Mouse pulmonary artery model obtained using a new volumetric bioprinting method.
Now scientists are aimed at conducting large-scale clinical trials, and at the same time, as the authors of the work say, their technology can provide not only the needs of the donor service, but also various research laboratories that are in dire need of living tissues for experiments. This can reduce the need for laboratory animals, which has been very often criticized in the last few years.
Vladimir Kuznetsov