Bioplotter Prints 3D Human Organs

One of the most interesting machines on the floor at Rapid 2010, held this week in Anaheim, CA, was a bioplotter, which prints three-dimensional pieces of human body tissue. Materials available for organ printing and soft tissue fabrication include agar, gelatine, chitosan, clollagen, and alginate and fibrin. In a few years the materials may include human stem cells for the bioprinting of livers and kidneys. A Russian scientist named Vladimir Mironov who conducts research in the field thinks that bioprinted human organs may be available by 2025.  Mironov, a PhD and an MD, works  at the Advanced Tissue Fabrication Center at the University of South Carolina.

Most of the current work is aimed at building scaffolds shaped like organs. The scaffolds are designed to be absorbed by the human body after they are infiltrated with cells that will form the new organ. Mironov says that the key building blocks are called “tissue spheroids”. One of the issues is the ability to build vascular systems within the new organs. That’s where the 3D bioprinters play a key role because of their ability to create complex internal designs in minute layers. “Without vascular systems, the organ wouldn’t survive more than five hours,” says Mironov.

The economics for the technology are promising consider that annual dialysis costs $75,000 and many people wait several years before receiving a transplant. The Bioplotter was developed by a German company called envisonTEC.  The Bioplotter shown at Rapid 2010 is a fourth generation machine that costs 150,000 Euros ($188,000).

The 3D-Bioplotter is  designed to operate in sterile environments in a laminar flowbox, a requirement of biofabrication. The 3D-Bioplotter uses a technology invented and developed at the Materials Research Centre in Germany. After transferring 3D CAD data to a PC provided with the Bioplotter it is processed by a special software Package. The preprocessed data is then transferred to the 3D-Bioplotter using a network connection.