his team are using 3-D printers to create tiny replicas of human organs, including miniature lungs and colons
Holy cow, I know we all wanted flying cars but in many ways this is even cooler and more useful! This kind of thing is indeed something that just screams "Here comes the future!".
I hope this tech makes the Chinese organ black market to collapse.
That is a really interesting possibility! It would sure be nice to remove the profit from such activity as soon as possible, though I think more work would need to be done to totally fabricate an organ that could be used for human transplant (which I assume is where most black market organs are used)?
Nah. Most black market organs are things like rhinoceros horn or bear gall bladder or some such. "Traditional medicine".
OTOH, printing organs for transplant would be extremely beneficial, if only because you could culture the ink out of the patient's own stem cells, so there wouldn't be a problem with rejection.
but in many ways this is even cooler and more useful! This kind of thing is indeed something that just screams "Here comes the future!".
Yup, it's indeed *extremely useful*. It's been used a lot by some colleagues working on cancer research.
There's a lot of things that you can't study on simple cell culture in a petri dish, because there much more to it than just a loose collection of cells. A lot of disease and treatments depends on complex interaction between multiple different population of cells, and from their 3d organization and structure.
It used to be that moving to an animal model was the only way to study diseases and test treatments while taking into account such complexity. But now, organoids offer the possibility to simulate that complexity in the lab.
Throw in microfuildics in the mix, and you can atually network multiple such oganoids, each simulating the peculiar struture and cell populations mixture of a different organs and your whole experiment can now simulate multi-organs interaction. All this while in small container requiring relatively few manual labour.
And the small foot-print in turn encourage doing a lot of parallel tests to screen a large amount of conditions or candidates.
the main driver behind organoids is drug and cancer research. they just need tiny bits that basically only have the feature and structure needed. i.e.: you don't need to grow a full human-sized lung, you only need to grow a couple of tiny alveolae and sourrinding blood vessels that have the feature you need for your simulations. (so small patches of skin are actually closer to be practical than giant organs)
I know Atala's been pushing at that for a while as it's not the first time I've seen his name in the area. I think he was one of the guys behind printed bladders. My shaky memory is that organs are hard because the challenge is getting all the blood vessels and nerves printed reliably and not failing anywhere. But that might have been a few years back and things have improved.
Digits I think are much harder due to all the pieces involved: bone, cartilage, nerves, blood vessels, skin, muscles, joints... But t
For now, I take it as a fairy tale. I do not aspire to become an android in my lifetime. Herbal therapy is my favorite - https://premiumjane.com/ [premiumjane.com] I can hardly accept such developments other than in science fiction movies.. However.. I can change my mind by the time I become an old wreck))
Now THIS is the future! (Score:5, Insightful)
his team are using 3-D printers to create tiny replicas of human organs, including miniature lungs and colons
Holy cow, I know we all wanted flying cars but in many ways this is even cooler and more useful! This kind of thing is indeed something that just screams "Here comes the future!".
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Except cows are not holy.
Other than that, I hope this tech makes the Chinese organ black market to collapse.
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Except cows are not holy.
Well... [learnreligions.com]
I hope this tech makes the Chinese organ black market to collapse.
That is a really interesting possibility! It would sure be nice to remove the profit from such activity as soon as possible, though I think more work would need to be done to totally fabricate an organ that could be used for human transplant (which I assume is where most black market organs are used)?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. Most black market organs are things like rhinoceros horn or bear gall bladder or some such. "Traditional medicine".
OTOH, printing organs for transplant would be extremely beneficial, if only because you could culture the ink out of the patient's own stem cells, so there wouldn't be a problem with rejection.
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Useful indeed (Score:5, Informative)
but in many ways this is even cooler and more useful! This kind of thing is indeed something that just screams "Here comes the future!".
Yup, it's indeed *extremely useful*. It's been used a lot by some colleagues working on cancer research.
There's a lot of things that you can't study on simple cell culture in a petri dish, because there much more to it than just a loose collection of cells.
A lot of disease and treatments depends on complex interaction between multiple different population of cells, and from their 3d organization and structure.
It used to be that moving to an animal model was the only way to study diseases and test treatments while taking into account such complexity.
But now, organoids offer the possibility to simulate that complexity in the lab.
Throw in microfuildics in the mix, and you can atually network multiple such oganoids, each simulating the peculiar struture and cell populations mixture of a different organs and your whole experiment can now simulate multi-organs interaction.
All this while in small container requiring relatively few manual labour.
And the small foot-print in turn encourage doing a lot of parallel tests to screen a large amount of conditions or candidates.
Thanks (Score:1)
Appreciate some of that interesting additional info! I'll have to read up on this more.
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Any idea how long until they can start printing full sized kidneys and hearts? (Or even toes? Or even patches of skin?)
Limiting factor (Score:2)
The limiting factors currently are:
- size:
the main driver behind organoids is drug and cancer research. they just need tiny bits that basically only have the feature and structure needed.
i.e.: you don't need to grow a full human-sized lung, you only need to grow a couple of tiny alveolae and sourrinding blood vessels that have the feature you need for your simulations.
(so small patches of skin are actually closer to be practical than giant organs)
- complexity:
organoids usually will feature the 1-2 character
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I know Atala's been pushing at that for a while as it's not the first time I've seen his name in the area. I think he was one of the guys behind printed bladders. My shaky memory is that organs are hard because the challenge is getting all the blood vessels and nerves printed reliably and not failing anywhere. But that might have been a few years back and things have improved.
Digits I think are much harder due to all the pieces involved: bone, cartilage, nerves, blood vessels, skin, muscles, joints... But t
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