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"Bioengineer: the heart is one of the easiest organs to bioprint, we'll do it in a decade"--Wired UK

Organ regeneration, bioartificial organs, regenerative medicine, and the related possibility of 3-D printing of replacement human organs are all grist in my science technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH: Playing God with body, soul, and biotech.

The artitle, "Bioengineer: the heart is one of the easiest organs to bioprint, we'll do it in a decade"--in Wired UK, by  Liat Clark, focuses on work led by Dr. Stuart K. Williams at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute at the University of Louisville. The team has already bioengineered arteries and other blood vessels within the heart. Now they are at work on producing a complete heart, which he estimates can be done within a decade.

Here's his overview of the process (as it would work a decade or so from now):  "a patient enters the operating room and tissue is removed (we think fat is the best source) and regenerative cells isolated. The cells are then mixed with solutions that contain extracellular matrix molecules and other factors and placed in the bioprinter. The bioprinter then prints the heart."
 
A week or so later the bioprinted heart is ready to be implanted in the patient.
 
Link to the full article
 
We've alredy written in these pages about other ways in which 3D printers are being used to print replacement human organs.
 
Here's one article, which also internally links to a second
 
Here's another, this on using 3-D printing to generate a replacement part for a human skull
 
Also, check "Categories" in the sidebar of this blog to see several other posts here to bio-printing human body parts, as well as the use of human stem cells as one of the input materials.
 

Posted at 12:17 PM in 3-D printing of replacement organs, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, Bioartificial organs, Organ regeneration, Regenerative medicine |

Tags: 3D printing of replacement human organs, bio-artificial organs, bio-engineering human body parts, human stem cells, organ fabrication, regenerative medicine