It's alive!
In a breakthrough discovery, a decade in the making, researchers created an ear, muscle, cartilage, skull bone and jawbone using a super high-tech printer. All of the body parts were then transplanted into mice and rats.
"The main goal is to scale up production of these tissues so they can be used in patients long-term," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and lead author of the paper published in Nature Biotechnology.
The ear, cartilage and bone all grew and developed blood vessels once transplanted. So far the experiments have only been done on mice and rats in the lab.
As soon as more tests are conducted and researchers receive government approval, the technology will be tested on humans.
The military is funding the research in hopes of using it to heal battle injuries.
"Our goal is to treat patients and our wounded warriors," Atala said.
If some of this seems familiar, that's because scientists have been working with 3D printed organs for years. What's new is that these creations are more stable than others made in the past.
"The concept is, you would take a small piece of tissue from a patient — less than half the size of a postage stamp — then we can expand the cells outside the body and place them in the printer so we could print tissues for that same patient," Atala said.
It takes several weeks to grow the cells and a few hours to print them.
Wake Forest School of Medicine built this customized 3D printer, the only one in the country. It uses bio-gel and biodegradable materials and can scan a blueprint, then create whatever is ordered.
This may sound like the stuff of science-fiction, but Atala said it's not that far into the future.
The aim of tissue engineering is to grow replacement tissues and organs in the lab to try to offset the shortage available for transplants.
jcutler@nydailynews.com
