Hearts and Arteries Could Be 3D-Printed Cheaply

Any patient who needs an organ transplant has to put her name on a list. Wouldn’t it be better if doctors could simply print out a liver or a heart on demand?

At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers are making big strides toward this future.

They bought a consumer-level 3-D printer anyone can purchase online for about $1,000, and hacked it to print soft materials.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution,” Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a press release.

Like most 3-D printers, the one Feinberg and his team purchased was designed to print plastic or metal. Normally, it deposits material onto a surface layer-by-layer until the object is built up into the required shape.

Printing soft materials is a bigger challenge because the materials normally collapse under their own weight when printed. Imagine trying to print Jello layer-by-layer. It wouldn’t hold its shape. And printers capable of creating soft objects cost about $100,000 each.

Feinberg and his team hacked the inexpensive printer to print gooey, biological material such as collagen, the connective tissue that keeps….READ MORE

Dr. Bruce Conklin, a stem cell biologist at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, along with colleagues developed these tiny hearts using stem cells derived from skin tissue. The scientists allowed the cells to grow in a petri dish, adding a chemical layer containing slight physical and chemical differences, thanks to tiny etchings made with oxygen plasma.

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Because of these slight differences, the stem cells developed into different types of cardiac tissue cells, similar to the process that takes place in the human body. By the 20th day of the trial, the cells actually formed heart “microchambers” that were beating slowly.

This fascinating milestone can help researchers learn more about the way the heart develops in vitro to help prevent defects and can aid in evaluating heart drugs for safety, particularly for pregnant women. The tiny hearts could also serve as models to treat damaged hearts. In addition, the concepts learned from this trial could be used by scientists attempting to grow other types of organs in a lab.

A study published in scientific journal Nature Communications shared these findings.

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When you’re working hard and doing all you can to achieve your goals, anything that can give you an edge is powerful and will streamline your path to success.

Mind tricks won’t make you a Jedi, but using the brain’s natural quirks to your advantage can have a positive impact on everyone you encounter.

None of these tricks are deceitful or disingenuous, except for

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