Bioprinting Body Parts

Bioprinting Body Parts

Scientists Just 3D Printed a Transplantable Human Ear

 
Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

by George Dvorsky

Scientists have developed an innovative 3D bioprinter capable of generating replacement tissue that’s strong enough to withstand transplantation. To show its power, the scientists printed a jaw bone, muscle, and cartilage structures, as well as a stunningly accurate human ear.

After nearly 10 years in development, a research team led by Anthony Atala from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has unveiled the Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System (ITOP). Once refined and proven safe in humans, these 3D bioprinted structures could be used to replace injured, missing, or diseased tissue in patients. And because they’re designed in a computer, these replacement parts will be made to order to meet the unique needs of each patient. The details of this breakthrough were published today in Nature Biotechnology.

 Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine/Nature Biology

Bioprinters work the same way that conventional 3D printers do, using additive manufacturing to build complex structures layer by layer. But instead of using plastics, resins, and metals, bioprinters use special biomaterials that closely approximate functional, living tissue.

But existing bioprinters cannot fabricate tissues of the right size or strength. Their products end up being far too weak and structurally unstable for surgical transplantation. They also cannot print more delicate structures like blood vessels, or vasculature. Without these ready-made blood vessels, cells cannot be supplied with critical nutrients and oxygen.

“Cells simply cannot survive without a blood vessel supply that’s smaller than 200 microns [0.07 inches], which is extremely small,” Atala told Gizmodo. “That’s the maximum distance. And that’s not just for printing, that’s nature.” He said it’s the “limiting factor” that has made bioprinting a particularly challenging technological proposition.

 Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

The new bioprinting system overcomes each of these shortcomings. Biodegradable plastic-like (polymer) materials are used to form the tissue shape, and a water-based gel delivers the cells to the structure (the gels aren’t toxic to the cells). A temporary outer structure helps to maintain the object’s shape during the printing process. To address the size limit, the researchers embedded microchannels into the design that allow nutrients and oxygen to be transported to cells anywhere within the structure.

“We basically recreated capillaries, creating microchannels that acted like a capillary bed,” said Atala.

 Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

To test their 3D-printed bio-parts, the researchers performed a number of experiments on live animals. Human-sized external ears were implanted under the skin of mice. After two months, the ears still maintained their shape, and cartilage tissue and blood vessels had formed. Printed muscle tissues were implanted in rats, and like the ears, they too maintained structural integrity.

Stem cells were used to create fragments of jaw bones, which were transplanted in rats. Five months later, the structures had formed vascularized bone tissue. In the future, 3D-printed bones could be used for facial reconstructions in humans.

 Vascularization of a 3D printed ear after three months. Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine/Nature Biology

 Immunofluorescent images show 3D printed muscle organization from one to three days. Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine/Nature Biology

Atala said his team’s 3D-printed tissues appear to have the right size, strength, and function for use in humans. Their system can generate human-scale, structurally stable tissues in virtually any shape, and parts can be modeled in a computer according to the precise physical needs of a patient.

Once the structures are proven safe and effective, the researchers can start to think about human trials. However, “We’re still looking at the safety of these things,” Atala conceded. “It’s still going to be a while—we still have to go through a lot of testing.”

See [Nature Biotechnology]

From Gizmodo @ http://gizmodo.com/3d-bioprinting-just-took-a-major-step-forward-1758803208

Growing New Teeth Could Be A Possibility With These Stem Cell Dental Implants

 

Credit: Science Burger

 

By Brianna Acuesta

Stem cell dental implants that grow right in your mouth could replace artificial implants.

In a promising article published in the Journal of Dental Research, a professor and a group of researchers explained their new method of tooth regeneration and express high hopes for this method in replacing current artificial dental implants.

Stem cell research has been on the rise for quite some time, as these cells are highly transformable and can repair tissue by continually dividing into either a new stem cell for further growth or a specialized cell. The specialized cell would eventually have a job, and includes red blood cells, skin cells, or muscle cells.

In the case of these new stem cell transplants, stem cells from mice were mixed with human gum cells and transplanted into adult mouse kidneys. The cells grew into “recognisable tooth structures coated in enamel with viable developing roots.” The cells taken from human gum tissue were epithelial “surface lining” cells those taken from mouse embryos were mesenchymal stem cells. The mesenchymal cells are very diverse, as they can develop into a wide range of structures such as bone, cartilage, and fat.

Professor Paul Sharpe, who led the research team at King’s College London, explained:

“Epithelial cells derived from adult human gum tissue are capable of responding to tooth-inducing signals from embryonic tooth mesenchyme in an appropriate way to contribute to tooth crown and root formation.”

The research still has some ways to go because the group has the added challenge of finding a way for adult human mesenchymal cells to react in the same ways as embryonic. Leaving embryonic stem cells out of this groundbreaking finding is what could make the dental treatment more viable for the market, since stem cells from embryo raise questions of morality. Sharpe adds:

“We’ve shown in the lab that you can use epithelial adult cells with tooth-inducing mesenchymal cells from embryos and we’ve shown that embryonic epithelial cells with mesenchymal adult cells can grow new teeth. Now we need to combine adult epithelial and adult mesenchymal cells. It’s one of the last pieces of the puzzle.”

If the research team develops a way to make the two adult human cells to work as well as adult and embryonic cells, this could make the treatment more cost effective and better for patients seeking implants. The procedure and healing time are much more efficient than artificial implants, not to mention these stem cell implants will last forever.

Do you think that people will be willing to have a tooth grow in their mouth in the place of having artificial implants surgically inserted?

From True Activist @ http://www.trueactivist.com/stem-cell-dental-implants-that-grow-in-your-mouth-to-replace-fake-implants/

For more information about 3d printing see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/3d%20printing 

For more information about artificial organs see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/artificial%20organs 

- Scroll down through ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

Hope you like this not for profit site -

It takes hours of work every day by a genuinely incapacitated invalid to maintain, write, edit, research, illustrate and publish this website from a tiny cabin in a remote forest

Like what you see? Please give anything you can -  

Contribute any amount and receive at least one New Illuminati eBook!

(You can use a card securely if you don’t use Paypal)

Please click below -

Spare Bitcoin change?

For further enlightening information enter a word or phrase into the random synchronistic search box @ the top left of http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

And see

 New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

 New Illuminati on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/the.new.illuminati

New Illuminati Youtube Channel -  https://www.youtube.com/user/newilluminati/playlists

New Illuminati’s OWN Youtube Videos -  

https://www.youtube.com/user/new1lluminati/videos

New Illuminati on Google+ @ For New Illuminati posts - https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RamAyana0/posts

and see https://plus.google.com/115562482213600937809/posts

and google.com/+newilluminati-channel

New Illuminati on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/new_illuminati

New Illuminati on Google Follow - http://www.google.com/friendconnect/settings/edit?smpl=true&st=e%3DAOG8GaCFDeBRZ1yDY2DjCaq61tFDiwO07s%252Fwv3x8%252B%252FJgZJTLx5igbMomJIu3796Ja6n05WaS8qnJ0DLyeGk1q49tLD8m%252FhV1K%252Bq%252BQIOGOwLeWznnm5IGhzjfWzVnq5I4UJr3fw8yk%252B8W2OqwlCbL7BNsW32uouSc79Br%252BkOZQ1Fpzg6J3KMIZkzmg0%252FcPHsWUPqZv845VKS31S%252FbCm8NpINhlK1kDxUdRmcCkT37dIc4RB6PNurjCcd2%252BVkNBveCm4kAgeb8A3Q5hNj6%252FHplvQxKFI%252BW1TYBJVYqHHTKsnBPGcL6wlZdxTUwtfxWU2ZvANJQ%252F%252FUrolBwP7ovb92SZqSWMFJRnN2rsQ%253D%253D%26c%3Dpeoplesense

New Illuminations –Art(icles) by R. Ayana @ http://newilluminations.blogspot.com

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

DISGRUNTLED SITE ADMINS PLEASE NOTE –

We provide a live link to your original material on your site (and links via social networking services) - which raises your ranking on search engines and helps spread your info further!

This site is published under Creative Commons (Attribution) CopyRIGHT (unless an individual article or other item is declared otherwise by the copyright holder). Reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged - if you give attribution to the work & author and include all links in the original (along with this or a similar notice).

Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution!

If you like what you see, please send a donation (no amount is too small or too large) or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

Live long and prosper! Together we can create the best of all possible worlds…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

Organ Regeneration: On the Road to Immortality

The Big Idea: Organ Regeneration

On the Road to Immortality

 

By Josie Glausiusz

Miracle Grow

Photograph by Rebecca Hale, NGM Staff

Above: The synthetic scaffold of an ear sits bathed in cartilage-producing cells, part of an effort to grow new ears for wounded soldiers.

In the future people who need a body part may get their own back — regrown in the lab from their own cells.

More than 100,000 people are waiting for organ transplants in the U.S. alone; every day 18 of them die. Not only are healthy organs in short supply, but donor and patient also have to be closely matched, or the patient's immune system may reject the transplant. A new kind of solution is incubating in medical labs: "bioartificial" organs grown from the patient's own cells. Thirty people have received lab-grown bladders already, and other engineered organs are in the pipeline.

The bladder technique was developed by Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Researchers take healthy cells from a patient's diseased bladder, cause them to multiply profusely in petri dishes, then apply them to a balloon-shaped scaffold made partly of collagen, the protein found in cartilage. Muscle cells go on the outside, urothelial cells (which line the urinary tract) on the inside. "It's like baking a layer cake," says Atala. "You're layering the cells one layer at a time, spreading these toppings." The bladder-to-be is then incubated at body temperature until the cells form functioning tissue. The whole process takes six to eight weeks.

Solid organs with lots of blood vessels, such as kidneys or livers, are harder to grow than hollow ones like bladders. But Atala's group—which is working on 22 organs and tissues, including ears—recently made a functioning piece of human liver. One tool they use is similar to an ink-jet printer; it "prints" different types of cells and the organ scaffold one layer at a time.

Other labs are also racing to make bioartificial organs. A jawbone has sprouted at Columbia University and a lung at Yale. At the University of Minnesota, Doris Taylor has fabricated a beating rat heart, growing cells from one rat on a scaffold she made from the heart of another by washing off its own cells. And at the University of Michigan, H. David Humes has created an artificial kidney from cells seeded onto a synthetic scaffold. The cell-phone-size kidney has passed tests on sheep — it's not yet implantable, but it's wearable, unlike a dialysis machine, and it does more than filter toxins from blood. It also makes hormones and performs other kidney functions.

Growing a copy of a patient's organ may not always be possible—for instance, when the original is too damaged by cancer. One solution for such patients might be a stem cell bank. Atala's team has shown that stem cells can be collected without harming human embryos (and thus without political controversy) from amniotic fluid in the womb. The researchers have coaxed those cells into becoming heart, liver, and other organ cells. A bank of 100,000 stem cell samples, Atala says, would have enough genetic variety to match nearly any patient.

Surgeons would order organs grown as needed instead of waiting for cadavers that might not be a perfect match. "There are few things as devastating for a surgeon as knowing you have to replace the tissue and you're doing something that's not ideal," says Atala, a urologic surgeon himself. "Wouldn't it be great if they had their own organ?" Great for the patient especially, he means.

From http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/big-idea/organ-regeneration-text?source=link_fb20110307organs

 

Live human heart grown in lab using stem cells in potential transplant breakthrough

• By David Derbyshire
  
  

Breakthrough: Scientists are hopeful their artificial heart will be beating within days

Scientists are growing human hearts in laboratories, offering hope for millions of cardiac patients.

American researchers believe the artificial organs could start beating within weeks.

The experiment is a major step towards the first ‘grow-your-own’ heart, and could pave the way for  livers, lungs or kidneys to be made  to order.

The organs were created by removing muscle cells from donor organs to leave behind tough hearts of connective tissue.

Researchers then injected stem cells which multiplied and grew around the structure, eventually turning into healthy heart cells.

Dr Doris Taylor, an expert in regenerative medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said: ‘The hearts are growing, and we hope they will show signs of beating within the next weeks.

‘There are many hurdles to overcome to generate a fully functioning heart, but my prediction is that it may one day be possible to grow entire organs for transplant.’

Patients given normal heart transplants must take drugs to suppress their immune systems for the rest of their lives.
 
This can increase the risk of high blood pressure, kidney failure and diabetes.

If new hearts could be made using a patient’s own stem cells, it is less likely they would be rejected.

The lab-grown organs have been created using these types of cells – the body’s immature ‘master cells’ which have the ability to turn into different types of tissue. The experiment follows a string of successes for researchers trying to create spare body parts for transplants.

In 2007, British doctors grew  a human heart valve using stem  cells taken from a patient’s  bone marrow.

HOW TO GROW YOUR OWN HEART

 

• The donor heart is removed from the body; pig hearts may also be suitable.
• Detergents are then used to strip the cells from the heart leaving behind the protein skeleton or 'ghost heart'.
• Stem cells grown from cells taken from a patient are then added to the ghost heart.
• The stem cells then multiply and generate new heart cells. now all that is left is the hope that these will start beating.

A year later, scientists grew a beating animal heart for the first time.

Dr Taylor’s team have already created beating rat and pig hearts. Although they were too weak to be used in animals, the work was an important step towards tailor-made organs.

In their latest study, reported at the American College of Cardiology’s annual conference in New Orleans, researchers created new organs using human hearts taken from dead bodies.

The scientists stripped the  cells from the dead hearts with a powerful detergent, leaving ‘ghost heart’ scaffolds made from the protein collagen.

The ghost hearts were then injected with millions of stem cells, which had been extracted from patients and supplied with nutrients.

The stem cells ‘recognised’ the collagen heart structure and began to turn into heart muscle cells.

The hearts have yet to start beating – but if they do, they could be strong enough to pump blood.

However, the race to create a working heart faces many obstacles.  One of the biggest is getting enough oxygen to the organ through a complex network of blood vessels. Scientists also need to ensure the heart cells beat in time.

Dr Taylor told the Sunday Times: ‘We are a long way off creating a heart for transplant, but we think we’ve opened a door to building any organ for human transplant.’

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1372938/Live-human-heart-grown-lab-using-stem-cells-potential-transplant-breakthrough.html

For further enlightenment enter a word or phrase into the search box @  New Illuminati:

 http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

or http://newilluminati.blog-city.com  (this one only works with Firefox)

And see

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

 New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

 New Illuminati on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Illuminati/320674219559  

The Prince of Centraxis – http://centraxis.blogspot.com

This material is published under Creative Commons Copyright (unless an individual item is declared otherwise by copyright holder) – reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged, if you give attribution to the work & author - and please include a (preferably active) link to the original along with this notice. Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution! If you like what you see, please send a tiny donation or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com