(NaturalNews) Organ printing, or the process of engineering tissue via 3D printing, possesses revolutionary potential for organ transplants. But do sociological consequences follow? Organ printing offers help to those in need of immediate organ transplants and other emergency situations, but it also pushes the medical establishment towards utilizing artificial biology as an immediate means of treatment over sound nutrition and preventative treatment. The hasty technological advancement towards organ printing is offering surgery-happy medical establishments even more ways to use invasive medical practices.
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News talking about how organ printing can change the medicine for people.
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A little power-point kinda thing.
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The creation process of artificial tissue is a complex and expensive process. In order to build 3D structures such as a kidney or lung, a printer is used to assemble cells into whichever shape is wanted. For this to happen, the printer creates a sheet of bio
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paper which is cell-friendly. Afterwards, it prints out the living cell clusters onto the paper. After the clusters are placed close to one another, the cells naturally self-organize and morph into more complex tissue structures. The whole process is then repeated to add multiple layers with each layer separated by a thin piece of bio-paper. Eventually, the bio-paper dissolves and all of the layers become one.To get a further understanding of the methodology, it is important to understand the current challenges that go along with 'printing' artificial organs to be used in human bodies.As of now, scientists are only able to produce a maximum of about 2 inches of thickness. "When you print something very thick, the cells on the inside will die -- there's no nutrients getting in there -- so we need to print channels there and hope that they become blood vessels", explains Thomas Boland, an associate professor at Clemson University.
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3D Printed Organs May Mean End To Waiting Lists, Deadly Shortages - 0 views
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"Dying patients could someday receive a 3D-printed organ made from their own cells rather than wait on long lists for the short supply of organ transplants. Such a futuristic dream remains far from reality, but university labs and private companies have already taken the first careful steps by using 3D-printing technology to build tiny chunks of organs. Regenerative medicine has already implanted lab-grown skin, tracheas and bladders into patients - body parts grown slowly through a combination of artificial scaffolds and living human cells. By comparison, 3D-printing technology offers both greater speed and computer-guided precision in printing living cells layer by layer to make replacement skin, body parts and perhaps eventually organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys."
Medical uses expand for human tissue from 3-D printers | The Portland Press Herald / Ma... - 0 views
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"SAN FRANCISCO - 3-D printing, used to construct everything from art to toys to spare parts for the space station, may one day produce human organs at a hospital near you. click image to enlarge A 3-D printed prosthetic nose and ear are displayed at an industry show in London in November. The technology may eventually help reduce organ shortages. Bloomberg News photo by Chris Ratcliffe Select images available for purchase in the Maine Today Photo Store The 20-year-old technology uses liquid materials that become hard as they print out three-dimensional objects in layers, based on a digital model. Current medical uses are in dentistry, for hard-material crowns, caps and bridges, as well as prosthetics. Last year, a 3-D printer was used to create a structure from moldable polymer that replaced more than 75 percent of a patient's skull. Now, Organovo Holdings Inc. is using 3-D printers to create living tissue that may one day look and act like a human liver, able to cleanse the body of toxins. Drugmakers and cosmetic companies already plan to use 3-D printed human tissue to test new products. Eventually, the technology may help reduce organ shortages and cut transplant rejections as patients receive new organs constructed from their own cells. "3-D printing is like a new tool set," said Organovo Chief Executive Officer Keith Murphy. "You can make a living tissue you can grow outside the body. That's the core of our technology. How can you be smart about doing that?" Organovo already is preparing to sell strips of liver tissue to drugmakers this year to be used to test toxicity of potential treatments, Murphy said in a telephone interview. The San Diego-based company's five- and 10-year goals are first to use a patient's own cells to print tissue strips that can be used to patch failing organs, and finally to be able to create entire new organs. The first 3-D printer was produced in 1992. Since then, a variety of materials have been used as the t
Dr. Michio Kaku: Physics of the Future (3/28/11) | VoiceBase - 0 views
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mighty mouse cell
Medical physics in 2020: will we ... [Australas Phys Eng Sci Med. 2008] - PubMed - NCBI - 1 views
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From the time when Roentgen and other physicists made the discoveries which led to the development of radiology, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, medical physicists have played a pivotal role in the development of new technologies that have revolutionized the way medicine is practiced today. Medical physicists have been transforming scientific advances in the research laboratories to improving the quality of life for patients; indeed innovations such as computed tomography, positron emission tomography and linear accelerators which collectively have improved the medical outcomes for millions of people. In order for radiation-delivery techniques to improve in targeting accuracy, optimal dose distribution and clinical outcome, convergence of imaging and therapy is the key. It is timely for these two specialties to work closer again. This can be achieved by means of cross-disciplinary research, common conferences and workshops, and collaboration in education and training for all. The current emphasis is on enhancing the specific skill development and competency of a medical physicist at the expense of their future roles and opportunities. This emphasis is largely driven by financial and political pressures for optimizing limited resources in health care.
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physicists are trying to improve the quality of life for patients
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a new direction we need to look at in Medicine.
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future of medicine
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