3 - five hundred printers can produce gun parts , aircraft wings , food for thought and a lot more , but this raw 3 - D printed Cartesian product may be the crazy thing yet : human embryonic stem turn mobile phone . Using stem turn cells as the “ ink ” in a 3 - D printer , researchers in Scotland hope to finally work up 3 - 500 printed organs and tissues . A squad at Heriot - Watt University used a specially design valve - based proficiency to deposit whole , live cells onto a Earth’s surface in a specific pattern .
This clause in the beginning appear atPopular Science .
The cells were floating in a “ bio - ink , ” to use the terminology of the researchers who developed this technique . They were able-bodied to squeeze out tiny droplet , containing five cell or few per droplet , in a miscellany of configuration and size . To produce clumps of cells , the team printed out cells first and then overlaid those with cell - costless bio - ink , result in larger droplets or spheroid of cell . The cell would aggroup together inside these spheroid . ellipsoid of revolution size is key , because stem cells need certain conditions to go properly . This is why very just keep in line 3 - D printing could be so worthful for stem mobile phone research .
After being squeezed out of a thin valve , the cells were still alive and feasible , and able-bodied to transubstantiate into any other cubicle in the torso , the researchers say . It ’s the first time anyone has printed human embyronic bow cells , said lead investigator Will Wenmiao Shu , a professor at Heriot - Watt . But … why ?
finally , they could be used to print out novel tissues , or as makeweight inside live organs , which would be regenerated . It could even answer to restrict fauna examination for new drug compounds , allowing them to be essay on actual human tissue paper , say Jason King , business concern development manager at Roslin Cellab , one of the enquiry partners . “ In the longer condition , [ it could ] provide organs for graft on requirement , without the indigence for donation and without the problems of immune suppression and potential harmonium rejection , ” he said in a statement .
The team took stem cells from an embryonic kidney and from a well - studied embryonic cell line , and rise them in culture . They had to build a custom reservoir — countenance ’s call it an inkstand — to safely house the delicate cellular telephone , and then they added some large - diameter nozzles . A pressurized air supply pumps the cells from the inkstand into the valve , which hold pressurized nozzles on the remnant . The squad could control the amount of cells allot by changing any of the factors , include the pneumatic atmospheric pressure , snout diameter or length of metre the nozzle stick open .
At first the researchers printed droplets , but ultimately , they were so precise that they made cellular telephone spheroids in a variety of shapes and size , like the university logo above . One interesting furrow : The cells also formed spheroids in the inkwells . More workplace needs to be done to explain that .
The researcher also take several steps to ensure the cells survived the printing process . canvass the results of several experiments , they find 99 per centum of the cells were still executable after running through the valve - based printing machine . “ This confirm that this impression process did not come along to damage the cells or affect the viability of the vast bulk of distribute cells , ” they indite in their paper , which is being published in the IOP regenerative medicine journal Biofabrication .
Stem cells are powerful because they can develop into any cell in the body . embryonal bow cells , which are taken from human embryo in the early stages of exploitation , can be develop into stem cell lines that can be grown indefinitely . This is kind of controversial , especially in the US . But medical researchers think they could be enormously promising for a whole legion of human ailment — stem cells could severalise into nerve cell , potentially replace the ones lost in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer ’s ; or they could differentiate into pancreatic cells , cure diabetes ; and so on .
Using a 3 - D printing machine to grow gun parts has been pretty controversial , especially during the ongoing post - Connecticut - take gun debate . But that may be nothing compared to this .
double : Will Shu / Biofabrication , Colin Hattersley .
3D printingFuturismGeneticsScience
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