Why Your New Heart Could Be Made in Space One Day (bbc.com)

Imagine a laboratory growing human hearts - and imagine that laboratory floating in space hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth. That may sound like science fiction, but bizarre as it seems, it could bring new hope for transplant patients within the next decade. From a report: While about 7,600 heart transplants were carried out around the world in 2017, there's a desperate shortage of organs, with thousands of people on waiting lists dying every year. Efforts to grow human hearts in the lab are showing promise, but are hampered by the need for the organs to grow around a "scaffolding" to make sure they don't collapse during the process. Reliably removing the scaffolding once the heart is complete is proving to be a challenge.

Space tech company Techshot believes zero gravity could be the answer. The International Space Station (ISS) is in constant freefall around the planet, meaning that anything inside experiences effective weightlessness, known technically as microgravity. This means organs could be grown without the need for any scaffolding, believes Rich Boling, the firm's vice-president of corporate advancement. One day hearts could be grown commercially for transplant, Techshot believes. [...] Developed in partnership with Nasa, Techshot's BioFabrication Facility (BFF) is a microwave oven-sized device that uses 3D printing techniques to create patches for heart repairs using a patient's own stem cells.

Comments

Re: Not in this Trumpverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Living organisms grown in space have shown a wide range of unwanted behaviour, lack of gravity provides zero clues to the organ or organism as to what direction is up or down and you would just end up with 7 heartpits all disconnected in a spiral arrangement that arises from circling the planet

Re:Hearts for the Wealthy

[Nidi62]

How much will it cost to launch the needed starter cell culture into space, presumably have someone up their manning it (even if mostly automated), return it from space...etc.

SpaceX plans to eventually get costs down to $1700 per kg with the Falcon Heavy. I could almost see the first privately (or semi-privately)owned space station being one where companies can rent research/production space and the station operator has techs up there to run the experiments/production facilities, maintain the station, etc. While it could be expensive, it probably wouldn't be prohibitively so. Especially considering you would be making (hopefully) rejection-proof, lifesaving replacement organs.