3-D printed organs

Will bioprinting one day help solve the shortage of organs available for transplant.?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Dr. Anthony Atala is director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He oversees a team of more than 300 physicians and researchers working to develop healing cell therapies and grow replacement tissues and organs in the lab.

(CNN) -- 3-D printers are currently being used or explored by a multitude of industries -- from printing toys and automotive parts to meat and even houses. In medicine, they are already used to print prosthetic limbs and make patient-specific models of body parts that surgeons can use as guides during reconstructive surgery. It's no surprise, then, that scientists around the world are investigating whether living cells can be used to print replacement organs and tissues.

3-D printing is an exciting technology that I except to play a significant role as scientists expand their ability to engineer tissues and organs in the lab. What many people don't realize, however, is that the printer itself is not the "magic" ingredient for making lab-built organs a reality. Instead, printers are a vehicle for scaling up and automating a process that must begin at the laboratory bench.

Dr. Anthony Atala

Before any organ can be engineered -- whether it's printed or built by hand -- there is much groundwork that must be accomplished. Vital to the process is a thorough understanding of cell biology. Scientists must determine not only what types of cells to use, but how to expand them in the lab and how to keep them alive and viable throughout the engineering process. Do they need to be imbedded in biocompatible material? If so, which biomaterial is most suitable? The bar for success is high -- the structures we engineer must function like native tissue.

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Lab-built organs

3-D printers ... offer the opportunity to very precisely combine cells and materials into the desired shape. Dr Anthony Atala

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3-D printed organs