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Wake Forest scientists print ear, bone, muscle structures
Human-sized external ears were printed and implanted under the skin of mice. Two months later, cartilage tissue and blood vessels had formed.
T
hey said they’d do it and now they have. In the cover story of SME’s Medical Manufacturing 2015 yearbook, Anthony Atala and James Yoo of Wake Forest Insti-
tute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM; Winston-Salem, NC) described the process by which they hoped to bioprint living tissue structures with a custom-designed 3D printer. And now they have proven that their approach works—that it is feasible to print living tissue structures to replace in- jured or diseased tissue in patients. Reporting in Nature Biotechnology in February, Atala
and Yoo (with co-authors Hyun-Wook Kang, Sang Jin Lee, and Carlos Kengla), said they printed ear, bone and muscle structures: When implanted in animals, the structures matured into functional tissue and developed a system of blood vessels. Most importantly, these early results indi- cate that the structures have the right size, strength and function for use in humans. “This novel tissue and organ printer is an important
advance in our quest to make replacement tissue for patients,” said Atala, director of WFIRM and senior author
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on the study. “It can fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape. With further development, this technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation.” The precision of 3D printing makes it a promising meth-
od for replicating the body’s complex tissues and organs. However, current printers based on jetting, extrusion and laser-induced forward transfer cannot produce structures with sufficient size or strength to implant in the body. The Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System
(ITOP), developed over a 10-year period by scientists at WFIRM, overcomes these challenges. The system depos- its both biodegradable, plastic-like materials to form the tissue “shape” and water-based gels that contain the cells. In addition, a strong, temporary outer structure is formed. The printing process does not harm the cells. A major challenge of tissue engineering is ensuring that
implanted structures live long enough to integrate with the body. The Wake Forest scientists addressed this in two ways. They optimized the water-based “ink” that holds the
Spring 2016 Photo courtesy WFIRM
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