Group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University designs method of 3-D printing for artificial tissues and organs
Carnegie Mellon University's group of researchers has designed a method of 3-D printing for artificial tissues and organs that may prove to be a game changer for patients waiting in transplant lists.
Scientists have been using 3D printers for printing hard objects with plastic or metal layers that slowly construct the objects, for many years, but researchers have faced struggle with printing soft tissues like organs because the materials used for them can't support their own weight.
The researchers bought a consumer-level 3-D printer for the affordable amount of $1,000. Afterwards, they proceeded to hack it for printing soft materials by layering them using another specially designed type of gel.
In a press release, Adam Feinberg, lead author of the study, said, "The challenge with soft materials, think about something like Jello that we eat, is that they collapse under their own weight when 3-D printed in air".
They developed a printing method known as FRESH, or 'Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels'. It starts using an appropriate-sized container of support gel. The printer has a needle, with which other gels are injected into the support gel by it, based on computer-aided design models.
In a report to UPI, Feinberg said they have created a method of printing the soft materials inside a support bath material. Mainly they print one gel inside of another gel, which permits them to correctly position the soft material as it has been printed layer-by-layer.
After the completion of the structure, the supported gel melts down and leaves behind just the soft object that had been printed. Using this method, the researchers created femurs, branched coronary arteries, trabeculated embryonic hearts, and human brains during tests.