3D heart printing breakthrough
US scientists announced Thursday they have successfully built functional heart parts out of collagen with a 3D bioprinter, using a breakthrough technique they say could one day create entire organs.
Their method, which was described in the journal Science, replicates the body’s own complex biological scaffolds using its most abundant protein at the highest level of precision yet achieved.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The structures are then further embedded with living cells and capillaries at a resolution of 20 micrometers, far greater than most 3D printers used to create plastic structures.
“What we were able to show was you can actually 3D print a heart valve out of collagen,” Adam Feinberg, a co-author of the paper who is a professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told AFP.
“We have not yet put them in an animal but we built a benchtop system that can simulate the pressure and the flow rate of the human body, and we show that we put it in there and it works.”
The team used MRI scans of human hearts to reproduce patient-specific parts, which achieved outcomes like synchronised beating and opening and closing of valves.
In April, an Israeli team unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels, but the organ did not have the ability to pump.
Previous attempts at printing the scaffolds, known as extracellular matrices, had been hindered by limitations that resulted in poor tissue fidelity and low resolutions.
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