Building a better scaffold for 3D Bioprinting
From the NIH Director’s Blog, courtesy of Francis Collins, NIH Director:
“When the heart or another part of the body fails, a transplant is sometimes the only option. Still, the demand for donated organs far outpaces supply, with thousands of people on waiting lists. Furthermore, transplants currently require long term immunosuppression to prevent rejection. Wouldn’t it be even better to create the needed body part from the individual’s own cells? While it may sound too good to be true, research is moving us closer to the day when it may be possible to use 3D printing technology to meet some of this demand, as well as address a variety of other biomedical challenges.
In a study published in the journal Science Advances [1], an NIH-funded team from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, recently modified an off-the-shelf 3D printer to create gel-like scaffolds that could be seeded with living cells to produce coronary arteries, an embryonic heart, and a variety of other tissues and organs.”
Learn more on the blog!