3D Printed Soft Structures Can Assist In Organ Transplants, Tissue Regeneration

Scientists make use of 3D printing methods to reproduce biological structures that can be utilized for replica organs and tissue regeneration. The researchers from the Imperial College London in association with Kings College London have devised a new technique for creating 3D structures making use of 3D printing and freezing (cryogenics) techniques.

This is rooted on the earlier study but is the foremost to craft structures that are malleable enough to imitate the mechanical characteristics of organs such as the lungs and brain. Being capable of matching the softness and structure of body tissues indicates that these structures can be utilized in medical processes to make scaffolds that can function as a stencil for tissue regeneration where injured tissues are stimulated to re-grow.

Regenerating injured tissue by pitting permeable scaffolds with cells and stimulating them to grow enables the body to cure without the issues that usually influence the tissue-replacing transplant processes, such as denunciation by the body.

Using scaffolds has become more ordinary and wide-ranging in its applications; however, this new method is unique in that it builds super-soft scaffolds that are similar to the human body’s softest tissues and can assist to encourage this regeneration. Particularly, there may be future prospective in seeding neuronal cells—the one concerned with the spinal cord and brain.

The research team validated the 3D-printed structures by supplying them with dermal fibroblast cells that produce connective tissue within the skin. They discovered that there were thriving connection and survival. This achievement, together with the earlier study, can pave way for further likelihoods around the stem cells’ growth that are medically stimulating owing to their capability to modify into diverse cell types.

In addition, the method can be utilized to make even whole organs or replica body parts. The method utilizes dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) to speedily cool a hydrogel ink as it is thrust out from a 3D printer. After its thawing, the gel produced is as soft as the tissues in the body but does not crumple under its own heaviness, which has been a challenge for analogous methods in the past.

One of the scientists at Imperial from the Department of Bioengineering, Dr Antonio Elia Forte, stated, “Cryogenics is the peculiar feature of this technique—it utilizes the phase change between solid and liquid to stimulate polymerization and craft super soft entities that can embrace their shape. This implies that the technology has a broad range of potential uses.”