3-D printing may end need for heart donors

Researchers from the Carnegie Melon used a run-of-the-mill 3-D printer to produce a 3-D-printed heart that could end the need for heart donors in the future.

Before this breakthrough, 3-D bioprinters have cost over US$100,000 and/or require specialized expertise to operate, limiting wider-spread adoption. Carnegie Melon researchers used a consumer level printer that only costs US$1,000.

“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 and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins,” said Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Feinberg leads the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, and the group’s study was published in the October 23 issue of the journal Science Advances. A demonstration of the technology can be viewed online.

The team was able to print soft tissue by printing inside a special gel that can melt off at room temperature and leaves only the new 3-D printed heart. The gel is called FRESH, or “Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels.” As a next step, the group is working towards incorporating real heart cells into these 3-D printed tissue structures, providing a scaffold to help form contractile muscle.

“Not only is the cost low, but by using open-source software, we have access to fine-tune the print parameters, optimize what we’re doing and maximize the quality of what we’re printing,” Feinberg said. “It has really enabled us to accelerate development of new materials and innovate in this space. And we are also contributing back by releasing our 3-D printer designs under an open-source license.”

Category: Education, Top Story