Scientists "Print" Human Vein With 3D Printer

An anonymous reader writes "3D Printing technology has recently leapt into a new realm — we've seen printers that can create entire buildings out of stone, delicious meals out of simple ingredients, and now — perhaps weirdest and coolest of them all — a printer that can build body parts from cells!"

Comments

Those other things are really interesting...

[clone53421]

Since TFS didn’t:

we've seen printers that can create entire buildings out of stone, delicious meals out of simple ingredients

References: 3-D Printer Creates Entire Buildings From Solid Rock, MIT’s Digital Food Printer Creates Nutritious Meals

At UWMC we've been making parts for years

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually, we have been doing scaffolding work on various body parts for years, including livers and other organs.

The hard one is the heart - the cardiovascular veins are easier to replace one by one though.

Re:At UWMC we've been making parts for years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd heard the scaffolding was going pretty well; taking pig organs, stripping away the cells with some kind of solvent, leaving the collagen-based scaffolding, then 'doping' the scaffold with the patient's cells to produce a perfect 'match' organ - with the success the doctors had with the South American woman a while ago (and more recently with a 10 yr old boy - http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_56929.asp) I'd hoped this kind of rejection-free organ replacement was *very* close to being more generally available.

It's Called Tissue Engineering

[LuxuryYacht]

It's typically referred as Tissue Engineering and it's been around for a while. Systems have been available for research purposes for a few years O.N.E. Technologies Material Deposition Systems

Re:Fingerprints

[Dalambertian]

So organ printing is decades away, huh. Man, you're living in the past: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/13751901.html