Medical innovations don’t stop there. I have already reported about 3D-pressure in medicine, but in this article we want to take a closer look at bioprinting. Bioprinting is a type of 3D printing that uses cells and other biological materials as raw materials. In this way, damaged organs, cells or tissues in the human body can be repaired.
According to the current state of the art, bioprinting can be used to print tissue and organs and to investigate the mode of action of new drugs. However, thanks to the 3D gel used for printing, the first joints and ligaments can already be regenerated.
What Is Bioprinting? (Source: The Medical Futurist)
This is how the bioprinting process works
The bioprinting process begins with the creation of an architectural design based on the basic composition of the target tissue or organ. In the lab, the bioprinter then uses this design to superimpose many thin cell layers to produce organic materials. The resulting hydrogel is designed to support and protect the cells.
The bio printing process is very similar to the 3D printing process. Bioprinting can therefore be divided into the following steps:
- Preprocessing: First a 3D model of the organ or tissue to be printed is created. These models can be created either based on non-invasive images, such as those obtained in an MRI, or by an invasive process, such as a series of two-dimensional sections taken with X-rays.
- Processing: When printing, material layers are merged one after the other to print the design defined in the previous step.
- Reprocessing: Various post-processing procedures are performed to transform the pressure into a functional organ or tissue. These methods include, for example, a special chamber that helps the bioprint to mature.
Bioprinting in the application
Today there are already various applications for 3D bioprinting. For example, an infant suffering from a rare respiratory disease has already been helped with a printed tracheal splint. Patients with bladder disease, for example, were also able to alleviate the problem by reconstructing the tissue. Only few fully functional organs have been printed successfully so far, but developments such as the Heart from Israel mentioned in the last article on the subject raise hopes for the next quantum leap in technology.
Post Picture: News Medical
