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Biotech Printer

Inkjet Printer Prints out Human Skin 359

Posted by CowboyNeal from the tattoos-made-easy dept.
Anonymous Award writes "Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed a type of inkjet printer that can print human cells. The scientists claim that it will be possible to print 'made-to-measure' tissue and bones to be grown simply by inputting their dimensions into a computer. But that's not all, the printer's creator claims that the potential of his team's discovery is enormous: 'You could print the scaffolding to create an organ in a day,' well, one day maybe. Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder? Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?"
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Inkjet Printer Prints out Human Skin More

Inkjet Printer Prints out Human Skin

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  • Great Marketing (Score:5, Funny)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:46PM (#11426091) Homepage
    If you can't afford this skin surgery, you can always get sponsorship from companies like Intel and let the printer print a non-removable "Intel Outside" on your new skin.

    This guy [slashdot.org] is going to get so excited.

    • Re:Great Marketing (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      If you can't afford this skin surgery, you can always get sponsorship from companies like Intel and let the printer print a non-removable "Intel Outside" on your new skin.

      Not like people don't already pay $$$ for tatoos of corporate logos.

      Just imagine, though, having to build in copyright protection to protect your trademark tan...

      You, too, can look like CowboyNeal!

    • Fax Myself to Mars (Score:2, Insightful)

      by queenb**ch ( 446380 )
      This presents several interesting questions:

      1) Will I be able to fax myself to Mars?

      2) Will the me on Mars be a duplicate/clone or will it be me?

      3) Won't cloning be obsolete? Why bother cloning yourself when you can just make a "photocopy" that pops out of the printer.

      4) How do you decide who is the "real" person? I mean what if I need part of a spinal cord or some other item that has to be harvested from a fully developed "me"?

      2 cents,

      Queen B

  • So (Score:5, Funny)

    by cbrocious ( 764766 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:47PM (#11426099) Homepage
    So you're saying that I can print a new liver? Sweet! *breaks out a 6-pack*

  • Great, almost there (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) * on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:47PM (#11426103) Homepage
    Now all we need to do is figure out how to bombard a body with slightly greasy solar atoms.

  • Skin (Score:2)

    by metlin ( 258108 )

    Are ya'll thinking what am thinking?

    Eh?

  • give away printers... sell arms and legs (Score:5, Funny)

    by myowntrueself ( 607117 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:47PM (#11426111)
    "Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder?"

    I don't know... lets see now... How about printer vendors selling toner cartridges for arms and legs for an arm and a leg?

  • Fifth Element (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Doofus ( 43075 )
    Visions of the body reconstruction machine from The Fifth Element...

  • Molding or creation ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cyberfunk2 ( 656339 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:48PM (#11426116)
    "Team leader Professor Brian Derby says that they are the only team in the world to work out how to print human cells without destroying them in the process."

    So, does this mean they're taking skin cells that are already created en masse from cell culturing and reshaping them? I mean, I assume they're not just "printing" new actual cells, right ? The article seems a little vague on this point.

  • Carts.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sc00ter ( 99550 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:48PM (#11426120) Homepage
    Will the carts be region coded?

  • obviously (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hyksos ( 595814 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:48PM (#11426124)
    Obviously the local gag at the lab is printing out a huge penis on your coworker's printer. Literally.
  • might actually be true?

  • Refills (Score:5, Funny)

    by Captoo ( 103399 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:50PM (#11426145)
    I'm sure that owners of these printers will have to pay a heck of a lot for small refill cartridges. Probably almost as much as they pay for ink for their regular printers. :-)

  • Buttocks (Score:5, Funny)

    by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:50PM (#11426146)

    This gives photocopying your bum a disturbing new dimension ...

    • Re:Buttocks (Score:3, Funny)

      by glenebob ( 414078 )
      You find the third dimension disturbing? I don't mean to be anal, butt with a crack like that, I have to wonder how you prefer your asses: phat or flat?

  • Fantastic (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vaystrem ( 761 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:52PM (#11426167)
    Hey look this fax's header is "ebola" oh #$@!

  • Beam Me Up, Mr. Scot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:53PM (#11426177) Homepage Journal
    Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder? Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?"

    This was one of the theories exlained to me, years ago in a physics class on how matter transportation may be accomplished...reconstructing by layers.

    The downside was you had to be destroyed to find out what you were made of in order to reassemble you.

    • Re:Beam Me Up, Mr. Scot (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @08:15PM (#11426410) Homepage Journal
      This was one of the theories exlained to me, years ago in a physics class on how matter transportation may be accomplished...reconstructing by layers.

      The downside was you had to be destroyed to find out what you were made of in order to reassemble you.

      Don't worry, any research into such things will be rapidly banned in the US I would expect. Anything that involves the construction of a living organism from base matter in anything other than the "church approved" manner is going to find itself in difficulty given the way things are going in the US.

      I'm not complaining about the church approved method for constructing organisms of course, I enjoy it myself from time to time, even if the organism construction usually doesn't take. On the other hand, I don't see a problem with trying to figure out how matter and organisms work, and trying for soem artificial (and more consistently reproducible) methods for the same.

      Jedidiah.
    • The good news is that we have invented a way to fax people by sending multiple slices.

      The bad news is the people-slicer that feeds the fax machine keeps jamming.

  • Sweet! Now I can... (Score:3, Funny)

    by CrazyWingman ( 683127 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:53PM (#11426188) Journal
    *actually* fax my ass! Who first...? :)
  • This sort of new printer technology always comes up... and fades away again. Remember printers that print "smells" a few years back? What about those 3d-object printers. Sure, they're used in labs somewhere, but when will these things become commercially viable and available?
    • Printing 3D objects is hugh in the design industry. You make a 3D model in maya or whatever, send the file directly to the printer. In an hour or two you got the complete plastic prototype. Hell, you can even have simple mechanical parts readily assembled.
    • Must have been the technology they used when I was 12 or so to print up the Penthouse Scratch-n-sniff centerfold.

      I don't even want to remember what that paper smelled like.
    • What about those 3d-object printers. Sure, they're used in labs somewhere, but when will these things become commercially viable and available?

      No thanks, I've got enough crap on my desk already.

  • Imagine the look on your face (Score:3, Funny)

    by eieken ( 635333 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @07:56PM (#11426224) Homepage
    When the paper jams in THAT printer.. yikes!
  • Ohhhhh ittttsssss aaaaaaaaa....

    Area-logical, auto-erotical, toobular-booular joy!
    An expose-ular regional, batch-ular pouch-ular fun for a girl and a boy!
    A latisma-dorsical, hung-like-a-horsical, calipa-ligical ball!

  • Wonder if there will be a human skin recycle bin like the paper recycle bin next to most printers.

    And for those sensitive printouts it'll be a challenge to feed the skin/body part through a shredder.

    Dumpster diving will be more interesting, that's for sure.
  • Wonder if there will be those remanufactured cartridges or those "fill it yourself" kits....or if the company will incorporate cartridge control chips like lexmark.
  • ... I can finally order 'personal' leatherbound books?
  • Remember when Capt. Crunch was randomly dialing numbers, and he found Richard Nixon's # in the White House? Good, now place yourself in a similar situation.

    100 years from now, you're randomly wardialing and you stumble onto the Dick Cheney's fax machine. Now you fax him the "scaffolding" for a tribble. The president of the time will be like "WTF? HAX!" and VP Cheney will say "Toss it." So whoever's there crumples it up and throws it in the recycle bin...

    Good so far?

    Except crumpling it up is precisely

  • Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?

    Ouch. That would be one painful transporter.

  • Most pop stars just sound flat and have the personality of a cardboard cutout. If you could print them out, though.....
  • "...Engineering Laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina, is one of the scientists who has rigged Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet printers to shoot out proteins instead of ink, and to capture tissue on specialized gel instead of paper. Older printers work well because their spray nozzles have larger holes and are less likely to damage fragile cells. It would be great to have a use for these old printers instead of searching for a place to recycle them safely..." Link [pcworld.com]
  • This is going to change the porn magazine business forever...
  • Are you a stalker? Have you had trouble showing your true love interest that you really care? Are the flowers, cards, and dead puppies not swaying your dream lover? Sick of all the restraining orders? We have just the product for you!

    Fax-A-Heart 9000! That's right, with the Fax-A-Heart 9000 you can truly give your person a direct copy of the organ used to express emotion for thousands of years--your heart! Imagine the look on her face when she hears the phone ringing on her fax! Order right now and

  • fingerprint security (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mrcubehead ( 693754 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @08:15PM (#11426407)
    Will fingerprint security will need to be revised?

  • autology (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @08:17PM (#11426444) Homepage Journal
    This is great news in making the reconstruction of tissue cheaper and more reliable through automation. The main enabling tech here is the phase of the process where patient skin cells are harvested, multiplied, and returned to them. They don't necessarily have to wait in a hospital while that labwork is performed. These kinds of autologous donations [bloodct.org], donating tissue to oneself, can become much more common.

    Personal bloodbank accounts should already be the norm, with risky behaviors insured only when blood is stored; the bank can charge "interest", putting some of the collected blood into the pool, along with aging blood in the accounts. That kind of preemptive storage will be prudent in general, when larger scale economics bring prices down. So I'd put some liver and kidney tissue in the bank when I started drinking, and start growing a replacement when a medical exam showed my original organ on the way out. Sperm or possibly egg cells might turn out to be a good source of stemcells to keep "on file", a hedge against later tumors or other disease/damage.

    A lot of the anticipated benefits of "cloning" will be delivered by autologous donation. Most of the tech is already available, for several organs. This inkjet system will harness all that momentum, and perhaps make it available (and affordable) for much less serious health crises. Their combination has the potential to change injuries and disease from crises to mere problems.

    • Re:autology (Score:3, Informative)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
      Sperm and ova would be very poor candidates for stem cells. They only have half of the genome available. Skin inside the cheeks would be better, and so would cells from the lining of the intestins. They naturally divide without limit. Still, marrow seems like the best place to look. (But cheek cells are much easier to get. You know, the part you occasionally bite by accident that isn't the tongue.)

      Progress is already being made in converting cells from one variety into another variety...but you need
  • Looks like, "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it get the hose again!" is a thing of the past. The psychopaths of tomorrow will soon be able to use this printer to build their skin suits the 21st century way!

  • I must be a pervert...

    I think just about everyone here viewed it in medical terms "this can save lives", "organ transplant".

    I was just thinking about a new era of porn. The pornstar gets faxed to you.

  • I can just imagine how much these ink cartridges will cost!

  • If they can make this work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by multiplexo ( 27356 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @08:39PM (#11426625) Journal
    it will be a huge advance. Right now if you get 3rd degree burns over 40 percent of your body you're basically dead as their isn't enough skin on the rest of your body to graft to the parts of your body that are burned. So since your skin is your primary barrier against infection you generally get an infection and die.

    Another problem with skin grafts is that they motherfucking hurt! Jesus H. God do they motherfucking hurt! I spent eight weeks in a hospital in 2003 and ended up with about 200 square inches of donor site and goddamnit it hurt! I ended up having my left leg amputated below the knee because it had been crushed and my tibia and fibula were broken in three places and even after that I'd have to say that the skin grafts were the most painful thing that happened to me. Any surgical procedure where the doctor describes it as "We take this device called a dermatome, which looks like a rotary cheese grater, and run it back and forth over the donor site to harvest a thin layer of skin" is not going to be any fun to go through and afterwards the donor sites are red and raw like a serious case of road rash.

    If they could print up enough skin, quickly enough it would be a huge, huge, huge advance. I wish them the best of luck.

    • I'm sorry for your tribulations. Best of luck! ;-)
    • I'm sorry to hear of what happened to you. Have you heard of this [archive.org] lab-grown skin technology? Here [wisc.edu] is another article. I believe it is now being used by a company called Stratatech [stratatechcorp.com]. The patents [stratatechcorp.com] have the title "Immortalized human keratinocyte cell line". The article says most lab-grown cells last only 15 weeks, while these accidentally discovered cells have lasted for years, since 1996 if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure, but I think one of it's intended uses is to eliminate the need for donor sites for skin gr

  • Wow, skin grafts (Score:2, Interesting)

    by grundy ( 151557 )
    If you've ever seen a burn victim get skin grafts, this is huge.

    They cut the burned tissue off with a long thin sharp knife with a depth gauge. It's just like watching the guy at the Greek deli cut strips off the lamb for a Gyro. Once they've got down to viable tissue, they wrap you up, staple the bandages on (yes right into your flesh like a band flyer on a phone pole)

    Then they take this skin shaver and grind little sheets off your ass. Oh, unless of course you really got burned bad, and your ass is t

  • I remember reading about this about a year ago, and I'm sure it was here. Yet despite whatever search methods I use, I can't find it! Anyone care to enlighten me? Or am I experiencing unexplained deja vu?
  • > Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?

    The next obvious step is to add a wireless link and voila! Star Trek transporter! (Except that you need a receiving apparatus at the other end)

  • Nice jokes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tmortn ( 630092 ) on Thursday January 20, 2005 @09:11PM (#11426937) Homepage
    But there is some serious change in the wind from this kind of tech.

    Just printing tissue could be huge. Not just for medicine. But how about you start printing Big macs. No more raising a cow. Just harvest some cells and start a culture farm that in turn prints out big mac patties based on muscle tissue of the approprite parts.

    Print any kind of meat. Or other food matter. No mass salughter of animals any more or having to raise them on a massive scale.

    Not against animals beint eaten.. Trust me I come from the

    "I love animals. try to eat at least one a day"

    School of thought. But this would be a boon for a country like Japan where they don't have room to raise large herds of livestock and have to import.

    This would also alleviate alot the fears of things like Mad Cow disease. You could also print any kind of cellular matter. Print a healthy microwave dinner in animal shapes for kids in their favorit colors.

    Food supplies no longer linked to harvest and weather but linked to energy and the ability to induce cell growth.

    That is just one possibility in addition to the cloning and organ possibilities. There was a bit in Pop Sci this month where someone has rigged a supply of cement as an 'ink' to a massive 'ink jet' head on a three D motion scaffolding to print buildings. Imagine a house complete with plumbing and electricity printed in a day or two.

    Star Trek hypo sprays. Ink Jet Technology. Already asthma style inhalers with injet dispersal are being eyed as a medicine delivery method over shots and even the possibility of direct atomization in to the blood stream ala hypo spray.

    Plastic fast prototyping technology. Print a cell phone cover, Comb, Toothbrush, ziplock bags and any number of other household common items. Slightly more complex would actually be able to print circut boards and buttons. Remote Controls, calculators. Even if the tech never made it to the home it can easily revolutionize manufacturing to an extent not seen since the industrial revolution. "Grandpa did people really used to sit on a assembly line all day long putting widgets together ???" The question there is only speed and economy of scale.

    and not only that but the ability to alter the design on the fly without any major retooling. Man it is exciting. Course there is the issue of what the masses of factory workers would do if their jobs were largely eliminated.
  • Am I the only one picturing "Adam" right now?...

    Looking at the naked Eve who has just turned up beside him, quite liking what he sees. "So, this is what I get for a spare rib?"

    Looking at the printer. "Can you get back to me in a few hours? Maybe with the full catalogue?"
  • ...takes on a whole new meaning. Psycho: I'll just fax this *actual* anthrax virus to the White House. President: Hey, looky! A faxy thing! GAH WTF *dead*
  • 'You could print the scaffolding to create an organ in a day,'
    well, one day maybe.
    ...the submitter added, redundantly.

    ;)

  • I guess it doesn't need to put the lotion on its skin anymore...
  • How about the potential to create artificial muscle tissue for the express purpose of food generation? As in print out a slab of new york strip steak for example? Could this solve the food problems on long duration space flights?

    If not for space travel, think of gloating to your veagan freind that your t-bone was not the product of a slaughter. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

  • It was called The Fly...I think we all know how that ended up... :)

  • Patentable? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pherthyl ( 445706 ) on Friday January 21, 2005 @12:37AM (#11428565)
    PRIOR ART! -God

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