Artificial Organ and 3D printing

Artificial organs and 3D printing

When an organ fails and endangers the patient's life, a transplant is required. However, transplants are quite occasional because transplants are in lack. Scientists have thought of two techniques for act with patients. First, I will talk to you about artificial organs and finally about 3D printing technology.

To begin, I will explain the construction of artificial organs. The contact of stem cells and artificial matrices allows the reconstruction of all the tissues of an artificial organ very close to the original one. This is done in vivo or in vitro depending on the organs.

The search for artificial organs began in 19th century with the development of breathing machines to replace failing lungs. Then Dr. Carpentier came up with the idea of an implantable heart. It is an implanted bioprosthesis but controlled by a control box and an external power. This technique does not require anticoagulants or anti-rejection, a real advantage. Then, a bionic eye was created and allowed to give a partial vision to blind people.

However, there are disadvantages. Indeed, some implantations of artificial organs promote the rapid and fatal installation of germs brought by the air. Then, some organs are not fully functional: for example, there is an impossibility of obtaining a gas exchange system as efficient as a real lung, especially since respiratory cells are difficult to culture.

On the other hand, bio-printing is also becoming a very interesting technique.

It is now possible to print human stem cells or produce tissue fragments with micrometric resolution to control cell self-assembly processes. These techniques use solutions containing cells from healthy tissue as biological ink. Scientists recently printed the first 3D structures that they implanted in mice to study bone tissue repair.

Bio-printing has many advantages. It is a fundamental research tool for the study of life, particularly for the relationship between structure and biological function. Moreover, the manufacture of tailor-made biological tissues should facilitate the discovery of new molecules by reducing the need for scientific experimentation on animals.

But, bio-impression requires millions of cells to produce a few square millimeters of tissue. Finally, printing organs such as the heart or kidney is still a dream, because of their complexity

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