3-D Printing of Body Parts

3-D Printing of Body Parts:

21st Century "the era of science and technology" has witnessed the completion of the human genome project, the creation of artificial DNA, novel drugs being brought to the market. The new buzz in the scientific committee is about the 3-D printing of body parts.

Wondering how 3-D plant and body parts are relative?

Read through how researchers from Cornell University, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Washington State University, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology shaped up this novel innovation.

EAR: The Detector

Design: Bioengineers acquire a 3-D scan of a child's ear, devise a seven-part mold in the Solid Works CAD program, and print the pieces. The mold is then injected with a high-density gel made from 250 million bovine cartilage cells and collagen from rat tails (the latter serves as a scaffold). After 15 minutes, the ear is removed and incubated in cell culture for quite a few days. In months, the cartilage propagates in the right proportion to replace the collagen.

Gain: At least one child in 12,500 is born with a state characterized by hearing loss to an underdeveloped or malformed outer ear. Ears grown from human cells are more effective than synthetic implants.

KIDNEY: The Regulator

Design: A 3-D bio-printer stakes multiple kidney cells cultivated from cells taken by a biopsy while building a scaffold out of biodegradable material. The refined product is then incubated. The staging, once transplanted into a patient, would slowly biodegrade as the functional tissue grows.

Gain: An estimated 80 percent of patients on organ-transplant lists await kidneys. Bio printed kidneys are not yet operative, but once they are, the use of a patient's own cells to grow the tissue means doctors will be able to provide every recipient with an exact match.

BLOOD VESSELS: The Circulator

Design: With the help of open-source printer (RepRap) and custom software, researchers print a sugar filaments network inside a mold and coat the filaments with a polymer derived from corn. They then disperse a gel containing tissue cells into the mold. Once it sets, they wash the structure in water, which dissolves the sugar and head off empty channels in the tissue.

Gain: Researchers showed that pumping nutrients through the channels increased the survival of neighboring cells. As blood vessels retain tissue health, discovering how to scale up and print a larger, more robust vascular system is the key to eventually printing entire organs.

SKIN GRAFTS: The Transplanters

Design: A custom bioprinter scans and maps the patient's wound. One inkjet valve evicts the enzyme (thrombin), and other ejects cells mixed with fibrinogen and collagen (fibrinogen and thrombin react to create the blood coagulant fibrin). Then, the printer sets a layer of human fibroblasts, tracked by a layer of skin cells- keratinocytes.

Gain: For traditional grafts, surgeons take skin from one area of the body and splice it onto another. The researchers hope to print new skin directly into a wound. In due course, they sketch to build a portable printer that can be used in war and disaster zones.

BONES: The Supporters

Design: Human bone contains 70% ceramics. Researchers pattern stagings with a ceramic powder, using the same 3-D printers that create metal components found in electric motors. An inkjet covers the ceramic with a layer of a plastic binder. With human bone cells, the model then baked for 2 hours at 2282 degrees Fahrenheit. It will support after some days.

Gain: Every year, millions of automobile-accident survivors suffer from complex fractures, which are difficult to repair using traditional methods. Obtaining MRIs for reference, doctors could print a custom graft that perfectly matches the fracture.

(All content and images are for educational purpose).

Thanks...