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3D Bioprinters Could Make Enhanced, Electricity-Generating 'Superorgans'

Posted by timothy on from the finally-some-competition dept.

New submitter meghan elizabeth (3689911) writes Why stop at just mimicking biology when you can biomanufacture technologically improved humans? 3D-printed enhanced "superorgans"—or artificial ones that don't exist in nature—could be engineered to perform specific functions beyond what exists in nature, like treating disease. Already, a bioprinted artificial pancreas that can regulate glucose levels in diabetes patients is being developed. Bioprinting could also be used to create an enhanced organ that can generate electricity to power electronic implants, like pacemakers.

43 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Funny

    Internet rule 34. 'Nuff said.

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    1. Re:Obligatory by sjwt · · Score: 4, Funny

      Its not all about sex, the best part is this brings new meaning to the phrase 'My battery just died'

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    2. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The first insulin-dependent diabetic I knew was captain of my school's cricket team, and physically fitter than you'll ever be. I've never been overweight in my life and try to keep myself in shape, yet half of my family developed diabetes later in their lives, regardless of their shape - so I know what I might have to look forward to. Yet my maternal grandmother, despite loving her sweet foods, suffered little health-wise until her late 80s. Life deals you cards, bro, and only an idiot thinks he has much control over the House.

      As to whether re-engineering the brain or another organ is easier - brains are just like legs, biological organs which can be damaged by the wrong stimulus. For the fat people of the America, advertising and choice of sweeteners go a long way to doing this. It requires a religious rather than scientific understanding of the human body to believe that all a person has to do to achieve something is to want to achieve it. And religion is interesting but if you're going to go down that path then you might as well pray the fat away.

  2. Give it 50 years... by gweihir · · Score: 1

    And some of these over-enthusiastic ramblings may even come true. But not much earlier than that.

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    1. Re:Give it 50 years... by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      A decades-long lead time is common in medicine. Research on implantable artificial kidneys has already been going on for about 30 years (the first patents date from around 1981-82), with no actual result yet. Here's a survey article from 20 years ago on biohybrid artificial organs. This kind of stuff takes a long time.

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    2. Re:Give it 50 years... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I am keeping up with medical technology, and frankly the amount of academic stuff that actually reaches the man on the street is so minuscule that anyone who has reached middle age can forget about that Revolutionary New Thing Coming Soon, because it won't be. While the quantity of medical research done has never been greater, advances in the practice of medicine have not been slower at any time in the past century. It's not just that we've solved all the elementary problems, but that research is now mostly directed by the businesses which sponsor it - and, contrary to popular belief, it is big, centralised, production-directed systems which tend to be quickest at completing the waterfall from research to implementation.

    3. Re:Give it 50 years... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      You are aware that most Americans have health insurance already including people who are not super rich. Medicare and Medicaid is there too to help out as well.

      The ACA or Obama Care has created a set of cheap insurances you can buy from too.

      I am not stating that there are no big problems. But you are over exadurating the state of healthcare in America.

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    4. Re:Give it 50 years... by gweihir · · Score: 1

      It is suckers like you that drives this form of irresponsible reporting. Nothing actually useful will be achieved in the short term here. I am an engineer and a scientist and unlike you, I actually do understand how long these developments take.

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    5. Re:Give it 50 years... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      One, the word is "exaggerating".

      Two, the "over" is redundant. It wouldn't really make sense to under exaggerate, would it?

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    6. Re:Give it 50 years... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      But ... but ... but this uses 3D printers!

      And rumour has it Elon Musk is involved. It'll be in the shops Monday, I'm sure.

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      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:Give it 50 years... by khallow · · Score: 1

      The ACA or Obama Care has created a set of cheap insurances you can buy from too.

      Since we're on the subject, no it doesn't create a set of cheap insurance. It creates a class of subsidized insurance with built-in bailouts for insurers who take on too much risk. Someone still pays for that either through the subsidies or through the bailouts.

    8. Re:Give it 50 years... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Yes, but America is also one of the few countries that are not crushing themselves from government overspending either.

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    9. Re:Give it 50 years... by q4Fry · · Score: 1

      Stop being "obggerate" ;-D

    10. Re:Give it 50 years... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      The NHS in the UK costs [poundsign]140bn, or 8% of GDP. Private healthcare adds about a quarter of that.

      Meanwhile, the US spends around 17% of GDP and still has people dropping dead from preventable conditions.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/visua...

      But, you know, communism and all that.

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  3. You could generate electricity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...by hooking a little mechanical dynamo to the heart, so that a little bit of the power from each heartbeat would go into triggering the next one.

    1. Re:You could generate electricity... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      That might help to regulate a heartbeat, but it would take energy away from the heart that could be used to pump blood. If the heart is weak in the first place, then I'm not sure you'd want to to tax it further by making it power its own pacemaker. Better to power the pacemaker by some other bio-electrical source, such as the electricity-generating artificial organ described in TFA.

      Then again, if we can just print someone a new "super-heart" then sure, put a dynamo in it and make it power whatever you want. Run your cell-phone, wearable Christmas lights, a human-mobile WiFi access-point, whatever. But how would this compare with other ways to create electricity inside the body, such as the new electricity-generating organ proposed in TFA?

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  4. They need a better market research dept. by dilvish_the_damned · · Score: 1

    If they really knew what they were trying to build it would be a multiply redundant liver with wireless charging pad.

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    1. Re:They need a better market research dept. by dbc · · Score: 2

      Soooo.... turn the liver into an alcohol powered fuel cell? So the only way your phone has enough charge to send a text is if you are drunk on your @ss? Do you really want to live in a world like that?

    2. Re:They need a better market research dept. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why yes, yes i do.

  5. First Biomachines by John.Banister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can see them having success with biological machines that replace more cumbersome mechanical machines. I can even see them producing special purpose machines, like something that processes blood alcohol and takes some of the stress from over consumption off of the liver. But replacing undamaged organs with "superorgans" will take a while as people learn what isn't now known about the complexity of the systems in which organs interact. By the time they get there they might end up with distributed organs made of groups of self replicating nano sized biomachines and we'll have to be scared of a whole new class of viruses.

    1. Re:First Biomachines by JimSadler · · Score: 1

      Organs that generate power as a bonus sounds good. But somehow we would end up with people who get a short and have an internal fire or electrocute themselves. Really I think a lot of these types of operations could do wonderful things but the great barrier might be in most people fearing a surgical cut or scar. It is rather like the legacy of fear in dentistry. People still dread the dentist yet the procedures are not unpleasant these days. We must only live in fear of the bill when we check out.

    2. Re:First Biomachines by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      I was thinking about the body's first line of defense, the Skin.

    3. Re:First Biomachines by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      I can even see them producing special purpose machines, like something that processes blood alcohol and takes some of the stress from over consumption off of the liver.

      Or a specialized organ that detects high blood sugar and converts it to alcohol! Uh, for diabetics, of course.

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    4. Re:First Biomachines by John.Banister · · Score: 1

      A technological innovation that allows a person to actually piss beer. It'll change frat parties forever.

    5. Re:First Biomachines by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      Dental procedures are not unpleasant these days? Can I move to your universe?

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    6. Re:First Biomachines by newcastlejon · · Score: 1

      Unpleasantness is relative. Have you watched Saturday night TV recently? At least when I had my wisdom teeth out there was a sense of relief at the end; the same cannot be said for something like Britain's Got Talent.

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  6. I neeeeeeeed it by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    I want a super kidney that's so powerful, it can even filter out duplicate posts on slashdot!

  7. Mind playing tricks or ... by Greg666NYC · · Score: 1

    Anyone else read today's titles as?

    3D Bioprinters Could Make Enhanced, Electricity-Generated 'Superorgazms'

    Amaya Gaming Buys PornStars and Full Tits Poker For $4.9 Billion

  8. Unfortunately by Eddi3 · · Score: 2
    This sounds great, but unfortunately from TFA:

    "Demonstration of a mini organ model lighting a bulb might be feasible in five years. But developing the technology for transplantation, hooking that up to the blood stream, connecting and synchronizing it with a heart with failed AV node will take much longer." Long enough that we probably wonâ(TM)t be enjoying superhuman organs in our lifetimes. Bioprinted "self-powered humanâ parts that generate electricity are at least 100 years off, Ozbolat said.

    1. Re:Unfortunately by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      It's always good to be skeptical of anyone saying some new bit of technology is only five years away from being useful... but people saying some bit of technology will take "at least 100 years" should be outright ignored. No one can predict that far in the future when it comes to technology. The NEXT technological breakthrough in a series is nearly impossible to predict a decade in advance. Calling a STRING of breakthroughs like that is dumber than tarot cards. Think about the conservative predictions in the 80s for technology in the year 2000. Flying cars and MAYBE personal radios for everyone. Saying everyone would have pocket supercomputers would have been laughed out of the room.

    2. Re:Unfortunately by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      All cars can fly. It's just that most don't fly very far and the landing is quite rough. Just like back then.

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  9. Better filters by brianerst · · Score: 1

    I'd think one good use for such biological machines would be as super-filters - organs that could scrub the blood of excess cholesterol and other lipids as well as various toxins we haven't evolved to efficiently process.

    I, for one, welcome our new bioprinted organs that keep my arteries clean as a whistle...

  10. 3D-printing cancer by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    What could go possibly wrong. First, you need the organism to not attack and destroy the "organ" so here you need a lifetime of immuno-suppressing treatment, maybe a weak to fake or include the bio-markers (dunno the exact english term) so the new organ can be recognized as legit. And then if that really works out, then how will the organ stay constrained rather than grow anarchically and without limits? Mutations?

    A great concept that seems to be science-fiction. If not impossible then I suppose the difficulty is staggering.

    1. Re:3D-printing cancer by Jesus_666 · · Score: 2

      How do our normal organs keep from gworing anarchically and without limits? They'd presumably try to use the same mechanism for their new organs. As for the immune system, perhaps they could base the organs off the recipient's DNA (such as through stem cells), which would make rejection less likely. It'd be expensive as hell, though. I do agree that we'll take some time getting there.

      Another interesting question would be that of failure modes. What happens if your fancy new electric pancreas gets infected or develops cancer? This could make operations rather interesting and lead to some unusual new medical conditions. Nothing insurmountable, I'm sure, but medicine would become more complex when these things are involved.

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    2. Re:3D-printing cancer by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      What happens if your fancy new electric pancreas gets infected or develops cancer?

      Uh...you become an X-man?

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  11. I'm not sure... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

    I mean, on the one hand we're facing the infinite power of bio-augmentation but on the other hand we'd be facing a future full of people who have to wear sunglasses because their vision is augmented, not to mention a transitory period where everyone is hooked on anti-rejection drugs except for a few guys who didn't ask for augs anyway. And things go badly we might end up with a near-omnipotent guy in the antarctic presiding over a world full of forgettable characters and crummy gameplay. What a shame that'd be.

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  12. Heart2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Finally we can get rid of these atrociously developed Heart1s.
    Seriously, what was the designer thinking by putting in such a silly ruleset for its operation?

    2 billion beats? Terrible. Say hello to Heart2, 10 billion beats guaranteed or your money back!

  13. just what we need by drewsup · · Score: 1

    Cops with genetically enhanced with electric eels cells in their hands for permanent tasing ability.

  14. Being diabetic could become an asset by Tekoneiric · · Score: 2

    I'd like to see an artificial organ developed that would directly convert excess blood sugar into electricity to charge electronics or for built in electric shock organs in the hands. It would turn being diabetic into an asset. You could charge up on sweets.

    It could also be used to burn off the excess sugar as bio-luminescence to be the life of the party.

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    1. Re:Being diabetic could become an asset by grasshoppa · · Score: 1

      It could also be used to burn off the excess sugar as bio-luminescence to be the light of the party.

      Sorry, the joke had to be made.

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  15. Pre-order? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    I already know which enhanced, electricity-generating superorgan I want.

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  16. We could make organs to generate electricity? by penguinoid · · Score: 1

    Agent Smith would be so proud.

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  17. I'd like a programmable calculator please! by penguinoid · · Score: 1

    This would probably be a better fix to our arithmetic deficiencies than an implanted chip. Someone should inform DARPA that this would be useful in combat, for example in calculating trajectories and eliminating the need for watches and allowing for more complex and coordinated maneuvers. This way it might get done in my lifetime.

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