

3D printing tiny human livers - kisamoto
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23419-3d-printer-makes-tiniest-human-liver-ever.html#.UgUWjGTXhcQa

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toufka
There are three main ways of doing this in lab now 1) letting live cells
recolonize a structure that mimics a whole tissue 2) with 'many hundred cell'
resolution printing cells in 'close to the right structure' and letting them
use their own systems to resort themselves out (what was done here), and 3)
single-cell resolution of very fine structures that make up the individual
units of an organ. Each have their own difficulties. And once they converge
(single cell->rapid->entire organ) you will see some pretty cool stuff.

One major impediment is similar to the 3D printing world - we need and rapid
access at single micron levels. Right now most 3D printers get down to about
100microns. We need better.

We also need creative ways to mix cell types - your organs use many (but a
finite number) of cell types dispersed in an organized way. Coming up with a
clever way to use different 'inks' of cells in an organized way would be
extraordinarily useful. As others have said - a primary reason is
vascularization, but there are a number of cell types you'd need to worry
about.

Definitely moving quickly though - we've seen pretty fast progress in lab
keeping cells alive and starting to use different cell types for small
structures. We can do any given manipulation. We now need to combine them to
make the entire process fast, micron resolution, high viability, natural
scaffoldings, with many cell types.

Futher - as this article points out, there's a LOT we can learn simply from
being able to recreate and experiment on small portions of tissues and organs
properly. The first results won't need to come from 'make a new liver' \- but
'what does this thing in the liver do', or 'can we fix a liver just by doing
this to it?'.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting coverage in Popular Science as well [1]. They point out (as does
the newscientist article) that the key to organ printing is vascularization
(creating a blood supply for the organ). Once you have that conquered you
should be good to go on Kidney's, Liver's, Spleen's, Heart Tissue, Etc.

[1]
[http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/how-3-d-printi...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/how-3-d-printing-
body-parts-will-revolutionize-medicine)

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VladRussian2
>Once you have that conquered you should be good to go on Kidney's, Liver's,
Spleen's, Heart Tissue, Etc.

and after that onto better kidney, better liver, better spleen ... like
printing a cat-eye-style reflection layer into new human eye to increase night
vision :)

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ctdonath
How goes plans for manufacturing a full-size liver? A friend needs one.

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lostbit
I didn't have associated the idea of "printing" to a "human organ" yet. Very
interesting. I wonder if, in the future, printing an organ would be easier
than making it grow somehow until it gets functional for transplant.

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jared314
It would be more of a hybrid of those two methods. You print the large parts
(even a micron is "large") into place, then let the cells grow the small
connections we cannot reliably engineer, like planting a garden. All this
reminds me of that classic statement about human longevity and the lack of
spare parts.

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weavie
So yesterday I thought 3d printers were just for making blocks of shaped
plastic. How has this suddenly moved on to making biological parts?

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toomuchtodo
This has been going on for a long time:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+print+body+parts](https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+print+body+parts)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=3d+printing](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=3d+printing)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidn...](http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html)

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Skywing
Man, the distant future is going to be an interesting place.

