Organ transplantation annually saves countless human lives. However, in transplantation there are many disadvantages: from the rejection of the transplanted sample to the banal lack of authority in a particular time. The last problem can be solved by the creation of artificial tissues. Moreover, significant advances in this field happen all the time. For example, a team of doctors from startup BIOLIFE4D managed to print on a 3D printer the material is suitable for creating heart muscle.
To implement this happened thanks to the special technology of organic 3D printing, which use the available technologies to create a viable tissue of living bodies. Experts from BIOLIFE4D printed kind of “patch” of myocardial cells, which, of course, can not replace the entire body, but is able to restore the damaged area after, for example, myocardial infarction or other serious damage to the organ. The “patch” is biologically inert and biocompatible, easily reacting with the cells of the heart.
However, the plans of the Corporation BIOLIFE4D is quite ambitious. Besides the fact that the planned massive introduction of “band-aid for the heart” in medical practice, scientists still aim to print a fully functioning human heart. At the moment the main obstacle is the difficulty of reproduction of anatomical structures of the body by using 3D printing technologies. But experts are optimistic and if they succeed – this might be a real breakthrough in medicine and transplantation. After all, in theory, print can be and other organs.
American scientists have printed on a 3D printer working heart muscle
Vladimir Kuznetsov