The primary full-size 3D print of a human heart is now available

Imagine having the chance to 3D print organs. No more waiting on the list. Well, a team of biomedical engineers at Carnegie Mellon University are bringing us closer to that reality.

Say hello to the primary flexible, full-size 3D print of a human heart. This heart mimics the structure and adaptability of an actual one! The invention is advancing the sphere of medication, and future versions could someday save someone’s life.

You’ve got probably seen this kind of printer before. It’s a sort of additive manufacturing printer during which each layer is supported by a solid layer below it. Printers for additive manufacturing are popular, but are often known to construct hard objects using materials reminiscent of plastic or metal.

But a rigid plastic organ is not practical. These printers may be used to print softer materials reminiscent of biological hydrogels – you realize, to create a heart – but these are inclined to collapse mid-print. But this latest method may very well be a game changer. The 3D printing technique is known as Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels, or FRESH. It might print biological structures using soft, spongy materials reminiscent of alginate, a biomaterial created from seaweed that looks like human tissue. AND it cleverly solves the issue of collapse during printing by suspending flexible materials in a container of gelatin. It’s like hair gel… except with body parts. How does all of it work?

For this team of researchers, all of it starts with an MRI scan of an actual heart. The scan is digitally “cut” into horizontal slices by a program that then translates them into code that the printer can understand. A needle-like nozzle moves through the gelatin bath, extruding thin layers of alginate. The layers stack on top of one another to create a shape. Once the print is complete, it’s placed in an incubator overnight, where the temperature is raised to 37°C to softly melt the gelatin support structure, leaving only the 3D printed heart.

On this full-scale test, they managed to breed features as thin as 2 sheets of paper, and in smaller-scale tests, they managed to get them to sizes as thin as a human hair. 3D hearts have been printed before, but they were small – more suited to a rabbit or mouse than to a human.

Full-size 3D-printed hearts can be used as educational tools to assist surgeons prepare for surgery. Older surgical models are made from stiff plastic or rubber, so that they are helpful in planning, but are limited of their capabilities because surgeons cannot interact with them like real tissue. FRESH hearts may be cut out and sewn, identical to real ones. Now surgeons can use these more realistic models to refine surgical techniques and test tools before the actual surgery.

So their practice test is not… you! And one among the best parts is that it may be a print of your specific heart! This may enable hospitals to personalize substitute tissues. For instance, if you might have a blocked artery and want a stent implanted in an actual heart, the surgeon can test the stent with a 3D-printed heart to be sure that it matches well.

They’re beginning to use this technology to design functional parts that were difficult to make previously. Collagen-printed trileaflet heart valves can open and shut, and printed coronary arteries help move blood across the body. Even chambers made from heart muscle cells can visibly contract and start to synchronize.

That is all great, nevertheless it shouldn’t be yet a functional, beating heart. Scaling from artery to the true deal isn’t any small matter. Using actual human tissue as “bioink” for an organ printer could also be too expensive for the quantities required. In keeping with one source, a heart made from alginate costs $10. The identical heart made from collagen: $2,000. But when you’re on the waiting list for this vital organ, you could be willing to pay any price!

Time can be an element. Currently, it takes 4 days to make a full-size FRESH model. If we printed on living cells at this rate, many individuals would die in the method. Billions of cells are needed to create a full-size heart. Current technology can only produce a fraction of this amount, so we still have a protracted method to go.

Even when it is not possible to create a totally functional heart without delay, the Carnegie Mellon team is already hard at work improving FRESH technology to give you the chance to construct more complex models. Someday, these printed wipes may very well be used to check drugs more safely, reduce animal testing, and even replace or repair damaged organs with a brand new, healthy 3D-printed duplicate. One thing we will make sure of is that they really put their hearts into it.