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Three-dimensional (3D) printing has gained traction in recent years and is now used across a wide range of industries for the quick and easy fabrication of complex materials. 3D printing is now set to revolutionise the medical industry, especially in regenerative medicine, as it enables cells, tissues and organs to be printed on demand. These biological components are traditionally cultured for long periods of time, using various gaseous and chemical environments so that they grow. Aside from the timescales, standard culturing methods can easily go awry if there is even a small, and often accidental or unavoidable change in the...

We recently reported on an alliance between four companies that has 3D printed heart structures in a weightless environment. As the first installment of our regular new feature where we put one big question to one really smart person, we asked Euguene D. Boland, the chief scientist of Techshot — one of the companies involved in the research — what the single biggest impediment is to having lab-grown organs available right now. The single biggest impediment is one familiar to many other engineers in their disciplines as well, it's transport. In our case, we are not moving people or cars...

3D printed organ transplants have been in the cards for a while, but deep tissue printing has proved problematic. Now a team of scientists in Korea think they have cracked the code for producing functional liver tissue by printing functional mouse liver cells. Simply put, we need more livers than we currently have as hepatitis, cirrhosis and liver cancer are increasingly prevalent. The donor system, meanwhile, is inherently flawed. Patients face agonising treatment while they wait for a suitable liver. There is simply no guarantee they will get a matching organ in time and even if they do, there can...

In Brief Japanese researchers have successfully grown kidneys from stem cells that worked as they were supposed to after being transplanted into rats and pigs. The Breakthrough With all the parts, grown, the kidney was placed inside a rat, then the pathway was added, followed by the bladder they’d grown—the new bladder was then connected to the rat’s native bladder. After sewing up the rat, they found the whole system worked. The team then repeated what they had done with a much larger animal, one much closer in size to humans—a pig—and found the same results. The paper was published...

US-based 3D bioprinting firm Organovo has set itself a challenge that could transform the future of medicine, and although the technology is still in its infancy and the challenges complex, the company's founder and CEO Keith Murphy says his firm is in it for the long haul. "Biotechnology is a very compelling space as you have the ability to impact people's lives," Murphy tells IBTimes UK. "I want to see patients benefiting. We want to help drugs get to patients faster, to get liver tissues [to prolong liver function] and to help people with chronic liver problems." While 3D printing...

The advent of three-dimensional (3D) printing has generated a swell of interest in artificial organs meant to replace, or even enhance, human machinery. Printed organs, such as a proto­type outer ear developed by researchers at Princeton University in New Jersey and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was on the agenda at the Inside 3D Printing conference in New York on 15–17 April. The ear is printed from a range of materials: a hydrogel to form an ear-shaped scaffold, cells that will grow to form cartilage, and silver nanoparticles to form an antenna. Printed body parts brought in US$537 million...

There is tremendous progress being made within the area of 3D bioprinting. In fact, there are companies working to print human organs as we speak, and within the next decade such organs may, if we are lucky, be available for human transplantation. With that said we still are a ways away from such an accomplishment. There are multiple obstacles researchers must first overcome. When considering the organ printing space in general, the printing of complicated vascular networks is the main obstacle currently preventing progress. On the other hand, when printing cellular musculoskeletal tissues the main obstacle in this space is...

New technologies such as 3D bioprinting promise to offer a laundry list of new treatments, drug discovery, and cures within the medical industry. With that said, we have been hearing promises for years that 3D printing will change the face of medicine. Despite these promises, bioprinting has yet to make any major impact within the market. Today things may have just changed! San Diego-based 3D bioprinting company Organovo (NYSE MKT: ONVO) has today announced the full commercial availability of their exVive3D Human Liver Tissue for preclinical drug discovery testing. The tissue, which is created via an in-house 3D printer, could...

A group of US scientists have created the world’s smallest human liver which can survive for forty days and works like the real thing – using a 3D printer. The mini-livers, made by California-based medical research company Organvo, are just half a millimetre deep and four millimetres wide but can perform most of the functions that a real liver can. The printer builds up 20 layers of hepatocytes cells, which carry out liver functions, along with two major types of liver cell. It also adds cells from the lining of a blood vessel. This allows the liver cells to receive...

IN a world first, Melbourne scientists have successfully grown an organ from stem cells. A team from Monash Medical School grew a functioning thymus, a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years. Stem cells are the body's building blocks and have unlimited capacity to grow and replace all the cells within a particular tissue or organ. "When I realised what we had finally done after 15 years of research, I went weak at the knees," Professor Richard Boyd said. He said understanding the thymus, located near the heart, was the...