You don’t have to know anyone with a failed organ to understand what kind of stress they must go through while they’re on the organ transplant waiting list. Many don’t live to see the end of that line-up and heartbreakingly, the ones who make it are still at danger from organ rejection. Thankfully, a solution is on the horizon. In the near future, all a patient has to do is wait for their kidney or liver to be printed, 3D printed that is.
You may have heard a thing or two about 3D printers, the method of manufacturing an object, layer by layer, guided by a digital model of what you wish to print. While it may seem complicated enough to print plastics or metal into complex shapes, scientists and engineers are now working on creating ways to print fully functional organs.
We’ve had the ability to print tissues (hyperlink) made of a single type of cell for some time now, but the possibility of producing entire organs is now on the horizon, most notably, the human liver.
However, there are still many major milestones to reach before the first printed organ can be transplanted to a donor. Currently, the greatest tissue thickness that can be printed is about a centimeter; adding more layers causes the tissue to suffocate from lack of oxygen and nutrients. Only once a way to incorporate blood vessels into the tissue is developed will there be serious talk of transplantation.
Nevertheless, we are already beginning to reap the benefits of these techniques. The thin pieces of functioning liver tissue are being used as ‘organs on a chip’ in testing new drugs. This means we can finally begin moving away from animal testing, without sacrificing reliability of animal models. In fact, such ‘organs on a chip’ save money and resources for medical research. Finally, something both PETA and pharmaceutical companies can be happy about.
As for clinical applications in humans, the current state looks rather disheartening; so far, only 3D printed implants have been used. However, for the thousands currently in line for a transplant, this technology offers reason to hope.
Published by Alena Safina
