Many people argue that the printing press was, by far, the most influential invention in human history and the machine that single handedly paved the way for present day communication. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to mass produce information like books and newspapers cheaply. This lead to the invention of the present day inkjet printers. The printers we print on everyday. Recently 3D printing has taken off and there has been much research going into the applications of this not yet flushed out technology. One such application, and the focus of this post, is the 3D printing of organs.
When this concept was first posed, there was a lot of backlash into the efficacy and ethicality, I mean there still is. This method of organ transplant can be looked at as “playing the hand of god”. The creation of organs from cells may be thought of as common knowledge but when it happens outside of pregnancy? That’s when things start to get controversial…. and in my opinion it’s when things get really interesting.
The idea behind 3D printed organs is more structured than one might think. Before I had heard anything about the technology my first thought was, “ Oh cool, engineering cells to come together and function on their own like an organ!” This idea isn’t completely wrong. The cells utilized in creating 3D printed organs need some help, they need a framework, a scaffold to be more precise.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/wake-forest-university-scientists-print-living-body-parts.html
This is an actual scaffold used in holding the cells to grow an ear. Scaffolds like this are a revolutionary technology for many reasons. Combining these scaffolds with the patient’s cells mitigates rejection by the body since the entire organ is made using the genetic material from the patient. 3D printing organs also allows for them to be stronger and more durable to physical stress. The polymers used in the scaffold are organic in nature and allow the patient cells to eventually take over and form the complete structure while retaining the stength of the scaffold.
3D printed organs would also remove the need for donors and are more ethical than human organs grown in animals. All organs have an age, a life span and donor organs are already old so they would have the chance of going bad quickly after the transplant. Also, since a donor would no longer needed with 3D printed organs there would no longer be a risk of rejection of the organ since, as I said above, the organ is grown from the patient’s cells. This same idea CAN BE true for growing organs inside animals such as pigs but this brings a whole slew of other problems. First off, the idea of growing organs inside other organisms is a bit unsettling. Second, the reason I phrased it as “can be” above is because the practice requires a bit more research and for the most part; there still would be some rejection since the organ is being grown in a foreign body compared to the host. On top of the rejection there is still the growth time of the animal itself. If the need for organs remains as high as it is we would need a lot of animals to carry our organs and keep them healthy, and they would need to grow to maturity before we could harvest the organs which would take quite a while.
Over-all 3D printed organs are a work in progress but they have a lot of promise. The retain speciality to the individual patient while being a relatively short growth time. These organs can be specified by their type and the scaffold that is used for their growth. Compared to the other options I feel like this is the best alternative we have at the moment. Because of the promise in this area of study I hope to see more people fund the research and come to accept it more
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n8/pdf/nbt.2958.pdf
http://bjo.bmj.com.proxy.lib.iastate.edu/content/98/2/159.full.pdf+html
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.iastate.edu/science/article/pii/S0306987715004715
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/02/11/4161675.htm
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/wake-forest-university-scientists-print-living-body-parts.html
