The printed body parts so far have been tested only in laboratory animals.
The research received funding from the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a federally funded organisation that looks to apply regenerative medicine to those injured on the battlefield.
"We are actually printing the scaffolds and the cells together", said Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest University Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who led the study team.
USA scientists have created a prototype 3D bioprinter capable of creating human-scale, structurally stable tissues in any shape.
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But existing bioprinters can not fabricate tissues of the right size or strength.
The Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System (ITOP), developed over a 10-year period by scientists at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, overcomes these challenges. The new custom-made bio printer builds the structures by layering patterns of cell-containing gels with biodegradable, plastic-like materials.
The researchers produced three types of tissue - bone, cartilage, and muscle - and transplanted it into rats and mice. The team got round this in part by printing a lattice of micro-channels throughout the structures, which allow nutrients and oxygen from the body to diffuse into the structures and keep them live while they develop a system of blood vessels.
The ability to 3D print muscles, bones and even ORGANS and implant them into patients has been proved feasible by scientists. 'We're now looking at the long term viability and safety of the structures, ' says Atala.
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The first real experiment of a 3D printed prosthetic being implanted in a rat - in this particular case it was a strip of printed muscle - had unbelievable results. Already, researchers have shown that the printer can print human-sized external ears that can be implanted and used. Five months later, the structures had formed vascularized bone tissue. Another issue is the lack of blood vessels, which means their size is constrained so they are too small to make human tissues and organs. The ITOP system 3D prints in a manner similar to commercial 3D printers, but it uses biomaterials that are very similar to functioning living tissue. The material cools quickly, and as it does the printer head adds new layers, building up the object. Another interesting feature of the machine is that it can use information from CT's and MRI's to recreate tissue in the original form of the owner.
Other researchers have demonstrated vascularization techniques like seeding channels with the cells that line the inside of blood vessels, or connecting implants directly in line with a rat's artery.
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. Once there, the printer would print the cells into an appropriate 3-dimensional shape, such as a human ear, which may take a few hours.
Stem cells were used to create fragments of jaw bones, which were transplanted in rats.
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This groundbreaking new method is not yet ready for clinical use, but its authors are sure that it won't be long before it becomes widely applied in regenerative medicine.
