Citing the recent acceleration of 3-D printed organs, Williams says it shouldn’t take long to create an artificial heart from a person's cells. However, he adds that 3-D printing technology has to harness the power of biology in order to accomplish the task.
Although researchers have created small chunks of livers and kidneys, the heart project is a much more ambitious initiative. Williams and his team are using 3D printing to create parts of a “bioficial” heart. “I looked at my colleagues and said, ‘Why don’t we build it like a large airplane?’” Williams said when speaking with LiveScience.
He suggested building each individual part separately—muscles, vessels, and valves—and then figuring out a way to combine them to create a working heart. In order to build a human heart, Williams also has to print human tissue, including complex networks of blood vessels. Although he and his team have already created larger blood vessels using other methods, he believes that 3D printing is a surefire way to create smaller blood vessels.
The current technology available today does not provide a way for 3D printers to create blood vessels so tiny. Printers can print structures that are the size of millimeters, but the smallest blood vessels are much tinier than that. Blood vessels are measured in a term called microns—and 1 millimeter is equal to 1,000 microns.
Until researchers can create more elaborate 3D printers, they will have to rely on blood vessels to self-organize before connecting everything with a 3D-printed organ. Thankfully, the process would likely take no more than 24 hours.
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| Image Credits: www.sfgate.com |
Although experts doubt that full-size, 3D organs will be a reality within the next decade, the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute is still hoping to perfect a 3D-printed heart within that timeframe. "We can print individual components of the heart, but we're building next-generation printers to build the heart from the bottom up," Williams said. If his team is able to create a 3D heart, it will be a significant scientific breakthrough.
Bioprinting is becoming more popular throughout the United States, and the results are promising. Officials announced that a 3-D printed splint manufactured at the University of Michigan had saved a baby’s life by restoring his breathing. (The case was highlighted in the New England Journal of Medicine.)
“Bioprinting is pretty much done everywhere,” said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, where scientists recently won an award for innovations in bioprinting. “Our ultimate goal is increasing the number of patients who get organs.”
The hope behind bioprinting is that scientists can figure out a way to manufacture enough organs to meet the current demand. Williams knows that many people doubt his ambitious timetable, but he’s optimistic about its feasibility. “America put a man on the moon in less than a decade. I said a full decade to provide some wiggle room,” he informed Wired.co.uk.
Williams said that, while interest in 3-D printing has “all of a sudden exploded,” he and other scientists have been studying medical applications of the technology since the 1990s.
Peter Jones blogs about science and technology.
Faizan Ahmad About the Author:
This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.