Printing Replacement Body Parts

Deep Penguin sends in a piece that appeared in The Economist a couple of weeks back about a developing technology to "print" body parts for transplant. "A US and an Australian company have developed the $200,000 machine, which works by depositing stem cells and a 'sugar-based hydrogel' scaffolding material. (The stem cells are harvested from a transplant patient's own fat and bone marrow, to avoid rejection down the line.) The companies are Organovo, from San Diego, specializing in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. The initial targets are skin, muscle, and 'short stretches of blood vessels,' which they hope to have available for human implantation within five years. Down the line, they expect the technology could even print directly into the body, bypassing the in-vitro portion of the current process."

Comments

Invetech?

[feepness]

They took my gene stapler.

Re:Invetech?

[kirill.s]

That's because you haven't submitted that TPS rep... bone marrow sample.

Count-down

[derGoldstein]

Printing penis jokes in 3, 2, 1...

Re:Count-down

[Stormwatch]

How well does it do nerves? Print me a new foreskin, please!

Re:Count-down

[EdIII]

How well does it do nerves? Print me a new foreskin, please!

I'm more curious about whether or not they print in letter, legal... or tabloid sizes.

Re:Count-down

[mikael_j]

As much as your comment may have been intended as a joke it is interesting to imagine a future in which you basically load up a large machine with the necessary basic materials, input a scan of yourself with whatever changes you want made and let the machine rebuild your body. And why stop at changing genitalia? or even general enhancement of your existing body, imagine what such technology could do for transsexuals, step into the machine a man and come out a woman. Hell, maybe you want to be a horse with a human brain, maybe if technology progresses far enough this will one day be possible...

Yes, I'm speculating wildly but I'd rather aim for the stars and reach the top of a mountain than aim for making my way to the gas station two blocks away and ending up at my neighbor's house. <Insert rant about space exploration here>

/Mikael

Sysadmin must update

[Dun Kick The Noob]

"Surprise Her !!!, Print an enlarged Pen**, 80% off" must be blocked

Prior art

[derGoldstein]

This mouse called dibs 8 years ago.

Seriously though, this certainly isn't the first time this has been done. Previous methods also used similar 3D printing techniques, except that the printed organ was a "dud" that was impregnated (injected and suspended in fluids, as I remember) with cells, instead of the organ being printed in one pass.

Not that this isn't very interesting, it's just not as new as they make it seem.

Science Fiction

[kamochan]

think 5th Element... now everyone can get their own Lee-Loo!

Re:Science Fiction

[derGoldstein]

You're gonna need Milla Jovovich's hand first. Got that "handy"?

Re:Science Fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just need someone put all the data on torrent.

Obligatory.

[stonedcat]

PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?

Re:Obligatory.

[daveime]

hahaha. I'm here all week.

Seems like much longer than that already.

One pancreas, please

[gbridge]

Being type 1 (insulin dependant) diabetic, the idea of having a new pancreas 'printed' is pretty appealing. I asked a doctor why they can't be transplanted like other organs and he said that it's because they're too fragile and would likely be damaged during the transplant process. It'd be great if printing a new one would work.

One can dream...

Re:One pancreas, please

[Antique Geekmeister]

It wouldn't work. As near as I can tell from the literature pointed out by my Type 1 co-worker, the immune problemm that destroyed your insulin producing cells is probably still active, and would also destroy the self-grown transplant tissue. My co-worker also pointed out some fascinating immuno-suppressive therapies that seem to control this problem, and allow diabetic animals to regenerate their own insulin producing cells, which seems like having this printer without bothering to buy the printer.

It's described at http://www.faustmanlab.org/, and it's quite fascinating work.

Re:One pancreas, please

[plastbox]

Of course you are correct but as you might be interested to learn, the more sugar our food contains, the harder the diabetes becomes to regulate. Blood sugar levels are supposed to stay between 4-8 mmol/L and while we have quite the margin upwards before something acute happens, the chances of over-compensating when eating a meal rich in high-GI carbohydrates and then crashing and quite easily dying are huge.

Yes, we can eat as much sugar as we want, at least in theory. We shouldn't though. Cutting sugary and starchy foods gives even you non-diabetics huge health benefits, so why shouldn't we do it when it makes our "wetware malfunction" so much more managable?

Re:One pancreas, please

[plastbox]

Greetings, fellow Type 1 diabetic!

The reason pancreatic transplants aren't performed is that the chance of rejection is 100%. Your auto-immune system is already attacking anything that secretes insulin.. An insulin-producing organ from someone else would most assuredly not stand a snowballs chance in hell.

There have been trials though. A few years back two diabetics here in Norway were "cured" by pancreatic transplants. They still had to live in virtual bubbles though because of the very strong immunosuppressive meds they were on. Despite the drugs, they only remained non-dependent on injections for about 12-18 months or so before the organ was put out of commission, so it's sadly not viable cure at all.

Another procedure that could (in theory) work is to have your immune system and bone marrow destroyed chemically, then receive both a bone marrow and pancreas transplant from the same donor. The chances of finding both from a compatible donor aren't exactly convincing though, and there is of course the chance of the "new" immune system that follows your transplanted marrow will accept the pancreas but reject the rest of the body, promptly causing your death.

There are some viable solutions though, like creating some sort of protein or something that to the immune system looks like insulin. Then administer huge amounts of this fake allergen to the patient to desensitize the immune system (similar to what is done with things like pollen allergies). The problem here is that no such substance exists as of yet, and you can't exactly give someone a superdose of insulin. Death isn't really the best solution, after all.. x)

Another being looked into encapsulating cells (in this case, insulin producing beta-cells) in some sort of alginate made from seaweed. This allows insulin and nutrients to pass to and from the cell, while making it "invisible" to the immune system.

Another seemingly promising solution is the theory that the immune system keeps attacking our beta-cells because of an on-going pain response triggered by the immune systems attack itself. Break the circle, and your body recovers most of it's insulin producing capability for at least a couple of years before something (like inflammation, etc.) causes you to need treatment again. I don't know how relevant this research is with regards to humans, but in animals injections of powerful anti-inflammatory drugs directly into the pancreas has reduced or abolished the animals insulin dependence for a year or two.

Btw, I am as I said a Type 1 Diabetic. These days, I am playing around with a ketogenic diet, and I am currently taking 20 units of 12-hour insulin (Insulatard) each morning. That's it. Do the opposite of what the "FAT IS THE ENEMY"-evangelists have been preaching the past 40-50 years and all of a sudden every health marker is even better than before, and I need less medication than most Type 2 diabetics.

Re:One pancreas, please

[Svartalf]

It's true that it's a myth, after a fashion. You CAN get away (magic words there) with a lot more sugar than most people think when you say "diabetic".

But it makes management much, much easier for type I and type II if you avoid consumption of excess sugar in your diet. You'll need less insulin if you're a type I and you might even not need much in the way of meds if you're a type II. It should also be worth noting that just because you're compensating for things with the meds, it doesn't regulate your sugars as well as a properly functioning body would do- you have spikes and valleys in your blood sugar- eating a bunch of sugars will cause a spike. The more of those you do to yourself, the more likely you are to develop the co-morbidities that come with Diabetes and unchecked sugars. In the end, I'll regulate my sugar intake and do without things, thank you very much...

But please without aliasing!

[Hurricane78]

Apart from it looking horrible, aliasing stairways are the antithesis to stability of an object. E.g. a bone with aliasing would be much less stable. And don’t even think about lying on it and not causing painful pressure points.

No thanks. I like my body parts casted or grown.

Re:But please without aliasing!

[Krneki]

Apart from it looking horrible, aliasing stairways are the antithesis to stability of an object. E.g. a bone with aliasing would be much less stable. And don’t even think about lying on it and not causing painful pressure points.

No thanks. I like my body parts casted or grown.

You are so 20th century.

Typical printer tactics

[DeanLearner]

No doubt if the machine is $200,000 the print cartridges will be $600,000 and still only use three quarters of its ink!

TED talk on the matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Anthony Atala presented this (and much more!) on TEDMED recently.

Awesome.

Hamburgers!

[Jahava]

What would, in my opinion, be truly interesting is if this printer device can be used with beef cells to produce artificial steaks (etc.). This could potentially remove the agricultural overhead of growing the meat, while reducing prices, increasing availability, dissolving concerns of inhumanity, and (possibly) skittering past some of the vegetarian reservations. Furthermore, there's no integration issues trying to put the product back into a live and functioning body!

Re:I bet consumables are expensive

[RMH101]

it's going to cost an arm and a leg to print an arm or a leg