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Science

Produce Organs...From Printer 214

Posted by Hemos from the haul-out-your-old-inkjets dept.
Gavinsblog writes "New Scientist reports that researchers have modified desktop printers and filled them with suspensions of cells instead of ink. Apparently the work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs. Amazing technology. " Well, I guess this could give a whole new meaning to "watermarking".
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Produce Organs...From Printer More

Produce Organs...From Printer

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  • Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by nano2nd ( 205661 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:05AM (#5142012) Homepage
    So how long till I can print out a nice fillet steak?..........
    • Actually, that would pose a fascinating problem: if you could print out a steak, would it be a vegetarian dish? After all, no animal would have been harmed. I have also wondered what the implications would be with regard to those religions that require meat be killed a certain way (Islam, Judaism, many others also). Would a "printed" thigh count as animal from that perspective? Could it ever be acceptable then, even if you were printing a duplicate of clearly kosher beef?

      I don't think we're there yet, by any means, but I certainly look forward to when the technology has progressed enough that such a discussion becomes relevant.
      • Not with printers, of course, but some people have been working on vat-grown meat muscle tissue, with at least one goal being for long spaceflights where grazing space for cows is limited. Unfortunately for ethics-motivated vegetarians, the nutrients they've been most successful with have been meat-based (fish broth or something), so it's not all that helpful. For the religions that have specific requirements for methods of killing animals, it's probably ok, because there's no animal-killing involved, though some of the pickier variants on kosher are likely to find some reason to object.

        For health-motivated vegetarians, or for people who don't eat meat because it's gross, well, it's still meat.

        • I hate to be vague, but hopefully someone will find some links to back this up..

          I remember reading that the problem with just growing a steak (and probably printing one) would be that it wouldn't have the texture of steak. The problem is that you need to exercise and stretch it, and you need the blood vessels, the mussle, the oxygenated blood, and everything else to make it taste and feel like a steak.

          I really hate to do analogies, but personally I see it like imagine cooking a steak. It (more or less) contains exactly the same thing before and afterwards, but it has changed dramatically.
          It's the same sorta thing. You can't just dump a load of cow-meat-cells together and get a steak.
          • I disagree here. I can see it as being quite possible to print out the proper texture of a decent steak. All you would have to do is put a good steak under the microscope and analyze the patterns of where the cells are, and how they're shaped. From there, you merely have to map different types and cuts of meats and save them on computer to get different flavors.

            Just like an inkjet printer uses different ink tanks - some have up to 8 now for different colors - the hypothetical steakjet printer could have different lengths and textures of cells, and the cook merely tells the printer which pattern of cells to print out. Say one set of cells for filet mignon and another for a nice porterhouse

      • Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by websaber ( 578887 )
        Judaic scholars have been discussing that a lot longer than you might think, and the consensus that I know of is that it would be considered kosher. If my memory serves me correctly 2000 years ago (good memory huh...) the Talmud was already asking the kosher status of an animal that was born by caesarian section which would have the same status as a printed piece of meat as it would be considered made by man. However the only real answer will come when they actually print one.
        • Hoping you'll notice I replied 'cause you sure ain't gonna read a week-old discussion, but: I fail to see how the Talmudic discussion on animals born by caesarian section would apply here, on any level. As long as the animal has a cloven hoof and chews cud, it is a clean animal. We have two problems besides that, however: first, because the meat was never alive, does it count as carion? The only parallel I can think of for comparison would be a stillbirth, which is definitely NOT kosher (or wouldn't be in my house unless a rabbi argued really persuasively otherwise). Furthermore, even if we agree that it is not carion, we still have to deal with the method of killing: since the meat is not kosher unless a shochet cuts the throat cleanly and the blood is drained, but here we have no full animal to kill to get the meat, then even if we can agree that the meat was alive at once point, is it still not kosher? This issue is far more complicated than simply citing the Talmudic discussion on cessarian sections and I am not at all convinced that this meat could ever be kosher unless (and this is I suppose possible) we could manage to classify it as a manmade vegetable (which opens up another whole slew of problems). I think it would require a very lengthy discussion in a bet din to establish that.

          Comments, corrections, etc. more than welcome. :)

  • print organs? NO! print organisms! (Score:4, Funny)

    by grimani ( 215677 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:06AM (#5142015)
    i'd print myself a girl.

  • And in other news (Score:3, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:06AM (#5142016) Homepage Journal
    Scientists today reported methods on how to store small quantities of ink in feathers (that they have named "quills") in order for writing. They claim this is the first step to mass producing multi-colour documents and distributing them over the internet.

    i.e. a nice first step, but -- to be frank -- an unfeasible distance from their lofty goals.

    • Re:And in other news (Score:5, Funny)

      by Negatyfus ( 602326 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:27AM (#5142225) Journal
      4-Winged Dinosaur Fossil Printed

      In an astounding accomplishment this week, scientists from China have printed the fossilized remains of a 4-winged dinosaur on a standard desktop printer. This achievement could go a long way in providing more evidence that, in fact, Creation was done on an old 24-pin matrix printer, which could explain away the various inconsistencies in the end result we see today.

      "There may have been driver problems in the first test-prints of Creation, bugs in the software that make the printer work, that God may have overlooked," says evolutionary theorist Dr. Winston Guystone. "Of course this is met with a lot of opposition, prominently from the religious quarters, who strongly believe God is omnipotent."

      Rev. Dr. Edward Martins of the Baptist Church of Redemption, responds, "It is absolutely ludicrous to think that the universe was printed from some divine desktop printer. And even so, where does the paper come from?" Lately the Protestant and Catholic church have been in an uproar when it came out that the Holy Bible was, in fact, based on an ancient Roman website that was run from a recently discovered modified Commodore 64 server with a custom network device.

    • Re:And in other news (Score:2, Interesting)

      by whimdot ( 591032 )
      I see the bbc are reporting that biometrics are gaining ground for user authorisation. Who will be first to print a retinal pattern?

  • The ink (Score:1, Informative)

    by mini_me ( 156805 )
    Here [eurakalert.org] is an article about the gel they use to print the tissue.

  • imagine the spam (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:10AM (#5142026)
    "refill toner cartridges! Print yourself a new 12 inch organ, guaranteed!"
  • and ye, a new paradoxical quandry is born:

    which came first, the printer repairman or the printer?
    • You're in trouble if you need to print your printer repairman (but even so, HP tech support will tell you to do so, cause it's on their checklist).

      What this really reminds me of is the days where I needed to decompress something all I could find to unzip.zip.

      -Puk

  • New form of terrorism (Score:1, Interesting)

    by horcy ( 545339 )
    Now we dont get antrax filled envelopes, but they'll print some sort of organic killer stamp on the envelope that will come off the moment you touch it and will make the kill... omg... am i dreaming again ;/
  • Does this mean we'll be able to get generic cartridges? Or will we be able to select different cartridges for what we want?

    Mind you this does mean they can combine the "Get Larger Genitalia" and "Cheap Ink" spam mails now.
    • Does this mean we'll be able to get generic cartridges? Or will we be able to select different cartridges for what we want?

      Mind you this does mean they can combine the "Get Larger Genitalia" and "Cheap Ink" spam mails now.

      Ummmmmm... to risk a pun, scientists already have beaten the spammers to this market.
      Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab [newscientist.com]
      19:00 11 September 2002

      (Yes - the story title is funny. You have permission to snicker.)

      Breast boost [newscientist.com]
      19:00 23 May 01

      Silicone breast implants could soon be unnecessary, claim researchers in Australia. They say their work will make it possible for women to grow their own.


      I think that covers pretty much the two biggest obsessions of the male market.

      On the upside (some signs of sanity returning to the American public).
      Judge Throws Out McDonald's Obesity Suit [yahoo.com]
      Wed Jan 22, 4:28 PM ET


      NEW YORK - Saying the law is not intended to protect people from their own excesses, a federal judge threw out a class-action lawsuit Wednesday that blamed McDonald's food for obesity, diabetes and other health problems in children.

      U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said the plaintiffs failed to show that the fast-food chain's products "involve a danger that is not within the common knowledge of consumers."

      The lawsuit was filed against McDonald's last summer and sought unspecified damages.

      "If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain ... it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses," the judge said. "Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald's."

      Plaintiffs' attorney Samuel Hirsch filed other, similar lawsuits last year. In one, a 270-pound city maintenance worker alleged that eating McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC had caused him health problems. Those suits had been dropped or put on hold while Sweet considered the lawsuit against McDonald's.

      The lawsuits became a lightning rod for pundits and editorial writers who jeered that they were the latest example of a litigious society in which people abdicate personal responsibility.

      "Common sense has prevailed," McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker said. "We said from the beginning that this was a frivolous lawsuit. Today's ruling confirms that fact."
      [ end of clipping ]

      Or as Lewis Black stated on The Daily Show: "You're telling me that you didn't know that FAT fried in FAT is FATTENING?!?

  • And you thought... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Docta ( 644045 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:16AM (#5142044)
    You thought that printer cartridges were expensive beforehand! Imagine what they'll be like with black, 3 colours and a "cell" cartridge.
    • Canon OrganPrintXP!! Gives (Primordial) Soup-er results every time!

      (Canon, OrganPrintXP, and Primordial Soup-er are registered trade marks of Canon, Inc.)

      Kind of brings new meaning to the expression "I could piss on the page and it would look better."

  • Wow, The Onion was right (Score:5, Funny)

    by icantblvitsnotbutter ( 472010 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:17AM (#5142046)
    You just know technology's getting scary when The Onion [theonion.com] is accurate (oddly, this same link was used recently in another Slashdot post).

    Mexican Scientists Perfect Copying [theonion.com]

    It may also be possible, some medical practitioners believe, to use copies to save lives on the operating table. A copy could be made of a kidney dialysis patient's good kidney, and then the copy could be inserted into the patient's body cavity, replacing the bad kidney.


    • I'd hate to have receive a transplant faxed from the organ bank. (Faxes never seem to come out well...)
      • Thinking of banks...Blood should be a relatively easy substance to print. (All cells are individual, and they're suspended in a liquid, instead of being stuck together.)

        Anyone know what the advantages are for receiving whole blood?
        • Hmmm...

          IANAPWRTFA, but just the story description alone seems to suggest that you need to have the source cells before printing the organ tissue.

          As a result, to create blood, you would already need blood cells.

          So it doesn't seem to me that this would be an effective technique for synthesizing blood.

          Now, if all you're suggesting is using this cell printer as a way of evenly distributing blood cells over a larger surface then, yeah, this probably would do the trick...but why?
          • Stem cells would let you create whatever cell type you need.
            • Yeah, I guess...but the stem cells would have to come from somewhere.

              I guess I was wondering why you would try to "print" blood.
              • Depending on how quickly you need to print the organ, stem cells might actually be your ink. (A nice ink they would be, self-replicating and all.)

                As a potential use, you may want to produce blood with 100x the number of platelets, or maybe with tuned antibodies (such antibodies may be designed as a temporary treatment, such as attacking cancerous cells, for when continued treatment is dangerous.).

                I see "printing" special fluids (or body fluids) as conceptually similar to printing a monolithic object like a muscle, or a heart.

  • Eeeeeeuuuuu! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Inflatable Hippo ( 202606 ) <inflatable_hippo.yahoo@co@uk> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:17AM (#5142048) Journal
    > Apparently the work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs.

    Imagine clearing out the jams in your flesh jet...

  • hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kalewa ( 561267 )
    Combine this with that electronic device printing and we could whip up an army of Epson cyborgs in no time!

  • Skin grafts.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oliverthered ( 187439 ) <oliverthered&hotmail,com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:20AM (#5142054) Journal
    I didn't think most tissue would be 'printable' it's to complex. so don't expect a new set of lungs any time soon.

    The process may be usefull for skin cultures or other simple single cell types. I beleive there are already other quite efficient techniques out there though.
    • I didn't think most tissue would be 'printable' it's to complex. so don't expect a new set of lungs any time soon.

      I'm not sure this argument holds. Any 2400-dpi printer that's actually 2400-dpi can place dots accurately enough to place cells, so placement's not an issue for a specialty printer. You can keep data requirements sane by algorithmically generating the tissue structure map as you print. We already both seem to be assuming that you can store enough types of cell; the limit to the number of inks you can store is a cost/engineering problem, not a strong limit.

      In summary, I don't think complexity is a serious roadblock.

      The main limits I see are more fundamental. Cells are flexible enough not to deposit easily into well-controlled 3D structures even if you do have a way to form connective tissue on contact (which we don't), and you're going to have an interesting time printing open spaces like blood vessels (water doesn't like staying in one place at *all*). I'm undoubtedly overlooking many other important problems in addition to these.

      Still, it's a neat concept.

  • Problems... (Score:3, Funny)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:20AM (#5142055) Homepage
    Ahggg! Paper Jam! Literally!

    Sorry, Mrs. Smith, we were attempting to give Timmy a new spleen, but he apparently slipped in a few pages from his Winnie-the-Pooh coloring book...
  • Scientists expect this technology to bring the dogcow [apple.com] back from the brink of extinction.

    Moof! [apple.com]

  • ... it was called weird sience.
    --

  • DMCA already called into action... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @06:22AM (#5142063) Homepage
    In a land-mark case Lexmark are invoking the DMCA against the pregnant women.

    "We produce organs, so apparently do pregnant women, clearly they have reverse engineered our technology in breach of the DMCA. As normally with copyright violations this is biggest in China, India and other countries with large populations"

    Pregnant Women have filed a class-action countersuit claiming prior art, but are not expect to win as they didn't give any cash to elected officials.

    Senator Joe Bung(R) said "I know my mother doesn't agree with this case but the fact is she broke the DMCA when she had me, I'd much of prefered to have been printed out and it would have been easier for ma, women must realise that this is a natural thing and we must let the market decide."

  • good news for geeks (Score:1, Redundant)

    by roalt ( 534265 )

    Just what we need, another technology that prevents a geek from having a girlfriend:

    They now will not only print pictures of nice girls, they now also start stuffing them...

  • 5th element (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isn't this how they made Lulu?
  • Does this mean that in the near future, I can print not just images, but clones of pornstars for my own *user*? ;)
  • Now I can put away the sewing machine I was using to stitch myself up a new liver *hiccup*.

  • Our compatible celljet and flesh-toner cartridges are designed specifically for your printer allowing you to produce organs equivalent to those produced by the manufacturer's cartridges at a fraction of their cost.

    Don't forget... Free Shipping on all orders! That includes our discounted value packs!

    HMOs, Hospitals, Medical Schools and Government Agencies - Talk to an Account Representative now! Please call our Sales Department to receive a special pricing quote: Tel: 1-800-555-0006

    Click here [slashdot.org] if you do not wish to receive further 'Deal of the Week' promotions.

  • From the Print Edition (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's funny that at the top of the article it reads "Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition"
  • So if you want a new one that'll be $250k for a single user licence.

    Licence agreement:

    No licence transplants allowed.

    Separate work and recreational licence required.

    This design is not tested for mission critical applications, any usage in mission critiacal applications is at the licencee's own risk.
  • Was I the only one that read: Produce orgasms...From Printer?

    dirty me

  • Insightful message... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by heytal ( 173090 ) <hetal,rach&gmail,com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:10AM (#5142193) Homepage
    Why is it that all the responses to this story are Funny and there are no Insightful or Interesting responses ?

    Does this show the /. mentality ?
    • Does this show the /. mentality ? Yip.

      On a serious note, this is still too novel for anybody to think about it insightfully (at least in the way /.'ers define the term). I mean sci-fi gave us years of phylosophy on cloning to think about before we had to deal with the concept for real.

      I sure aint never read about the human printer in a sci-fi story. Truth is also we know that it's early days yet. They would need something with a much greater capacity for layered printing before this is more than a science novelty.

      Frankly the concept just lends itself very well to humour so we joke. Insightfull and Interesting posts require you to have shown insight into the ramifications of the tech first - and frankly there just wasn't time.
      How many insightful comments on September 11 did you hear before September 12 (allthough of course not a lot of people joked about that one, but nobody was being insightful either)...come to think of it, the only insightfull response to 9/11 I have read so far was on the EFF website.

      More's the pity that everything I have seen on a .gov website would (if it was a slashdot comment) have deserved to be modded either redundant or troll.

      But I digress, point is I think it's just there has been no time for insight into this tech yet. But it takes 2 secconds to remember 'wierd science' - which was a comedy. Nobody ever seriously thought this could happen, so nobody ever seriously thought about it at all.

    • Re:Insightful message... (Score:2, Informative)

      by eples ( 239989 )
      I can sympathize with that sentiment - you can auto-mod down "funny" posts in your preferences. I have mine set to knock two points off.. That way I have to read all the way to +3 to get the "funny" comments.

      Nice feature :)
    • Why is it that all the responses to this story are Funny and there are no Insightful or Interesting responses ?

      Does this show the /. mentality ?

      I don't think it says anything about the /. mentality.

      Summary of article

      Some researchers who are in desparate need of grant money were playing with a "Play-doh barbershop kit", and thought to themselves "Hey, if we prentend to do this for real, we might get money!"

      So they spent gobs of "doh", and built something that almost looks like a prototype to something that may be feasible to build thousands of years from now. Optimistically, if Moore's law holds, we may have the equipment to make this work sometime within the next thousand years.

      One guy in the article grossly understated how important an invention like this was, by saying "We could be as famous as Gutenberg!" Something tells me that in the year 3117, when they finally get this to work, the guy who will be credited with the breakthrough will still be living, unlike these fools.

      As someone else pointed out, it almost reads like an onion story.

      Anyone who takes this story seriously should be modded down as -1 gullible. 90% of the people reading these comments clicked on the story because they wanted some good laughs.

  • beyond the jokes (Score:5, Funny)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:17AM (#5142204) Journal
    Can I print an organ that is disproportional (no I am not thinking about penises) to what normally comes out?

    like, say, would I be able to print a sphere of kidney cells?
    how about a longer stretch of arm-muscles?
    attached to a printed, longer leg-bone?
    can I print a new layer of skin, or new hair folicles? (can you imagine rogain all up on this stuff?)
    how about a third leg?
    in fact, how about a beak?
    a gill so I can swim underwater? (i mean, as long as the blood circulates through it)

    the possibilities are endless, marvellous, and scary.
    • Yeah, print those things, but how do you think you're going to connect them to your body?
    • Offtopic, but can anyone remember a really cool story about beaks. They took a duck egg and an animal with teeth. They took the teeth-growing-catalyst-thingies (as you can probably tell I'm not a doctor) and injected them into the egg. Then when the duck grew up, it had teeth, and the teeth were in the style of some 3rd animal. This was to prove that ducks evolved from the 3rd animal (I forget what it was) and the dna for teeth was still there, it was just that option was turned off.

  • ...the standard photocopier is no stranger to human flesh at most Christmas parties.
  • ah, organs ist it, as in wetware?
    ...and I already thought somebody made a fugue for laser-printers as a follow-up project to the symphony for dot matrix printers [sat.qc.ca] `
  • The canon corporation wishes to announce the immediate availability of the latest version of the 'starter kit 03'. We now encompass all faculties of life and offer a uncompromising value for money. After several years of research we are pleased to make available the total customisation kit for all unborn modifications needs responsible citizens require. Choose the physical characteristics beyond our rivals products. The unexpected is no longer a worry that mounts woe upon the expectant pregnant women. The pain and anguish and complexities of child birth are finally confirmed to be consigned to history. From the great day in 2009 when Cannon Corporation announced the first public showing of a newborn child, and the following scramble of IT companies to compete with a plethora of starter kits, our children are 100% guaranteed to not suffer from any genetic defects known to exist with previous technology. The subsequent embodiment of new laws and procedures has now ensured that our corporation and HP are the sole new born providers, for the world. Canon features -------------- physical preferences potential talent obiedience statis deanimation (for times when you need peace, to yourself) zodiac correlation

  • New Terrorist tactic.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by farrellj ( 563 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @07:29AM (#5142229) Homepage Journal
    Mail a Macro-exploit to Outlook users that causes anthrax to print out on your printer...

    I don't know if this is funny or scary...

    ttyl
    Farrell

    • Sure, I would be very impressed when a non-modified bona fide printer manages to create a living, working Anthrax based on shades of black, cyan, yellow and magenta ink.
      • I believe you could get just as terrifying effects much more easily.

        Four large stripes, one in each colour, and at the bottom, a simple line of black text. "This page consumed $3.62 worth of ink!"
  • First of all, this is great news. It mixes stuff that is just cool with actual hope of useful results. Bravo to these people on their work.

    However, why is it EVERY advance these days is compared to Gutenberg? Not to degrade the man's work, but comparing this to Gutenberg seems rather odd. I'd think there must be other breakthroughs to compare this too.

    Still, I can't complain. They may have found a way to save untold lives. Let them make what comparisons they will.

  • Differentiation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sam_handelman ( 519767 ) <samuel.handelmanNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday January 23, 2003 @08:18AM (#5142404) Journal
    Jamming the cells into the proper position works with cartilege - you can sculpt an "ear" out of cartilege and surgically implant it in someone's body, if there ear was cut off.

    However, more complex tissues require cell differentiation on a microscopic level.

    For example, your inner ear - the part of your ear that you use to hear - cannot be simply sculpted.

    Individual cells must diversify so as to play the proper role in the function of the organ; the nerve cells attached to the little hairs all have to be wired up properly and in the correct direction. This is true of all the organs you might wish to make. Actually, I'm not certain about the liver - all hepatocytes (liver cells) are pretty much the same, IIRC.

    There are cells in the kidney which exist to move salt out of the blood and into the urine (several different types of cells are involved, actually). They are epithelial cells. However, you cannot assemble a kidney out of epithelial cells; it won't work! The epithelial cells need to know - that is to say, they need to recieve chemical signals which indicate:
    a) That this epithelial cell is supposed to play a given role in salt transport (most cells don't make the proteins used in this process.)
    b) Which SIDE of the epithelial cell the blood is going to be traveling past and which SIDE of the cell the pre-urine is going to be on. In the living organism the blood may carry this signal (the nature of the signal is probably unknown) but you couldn't duplicate that with a printer.

    Stuffing epithelial cells (or even epithelial stem cells) into the overall shape of a kidney does not produce the chemical signals that trigger these differentiation events (when a "generic" epithelial cell - a variety of stem cell - becomes a kidney epithelial cell, it is called "differentiation".) In addition to various ions (Salt,) the kidney has dedicated mechanisms for dealing with dozens of other classes of chemicals.

    It is POSSIBLE that such a simulated organ might spontaneously arrange itself into a functioning kidney when blood was pumped through the correct portions.

    You might be able to help it along with chemical signals from a real kidney, somehow, or synthetic signals you add yourself.

    However, personally, I doubt that either of these strategies is going to work.
    • IANABiologist, but from what I've read, most of these signals come about from emergence...al that's needed is a concentration of cells. It kind of works like this: the outermost cells only have liver cells contacting x% of their cell wall, thus signalling that cell to be a certain cell and to release certain chemical signals. Cells more to the center recieve the message that they are surrounded by liver cells, and more signaling chemicals are coming from the left and top than tothe right and bottom, thus giving it a position in the cell mass, upon which it differentiates accordingly.

      This might be way too simple an explanation, but I do know it is at least part of the explantion, which is observed from differentiation in the zygote. It's not spontanious, it's a response which comes out of a complex behaviour emerging from a simple ruleset.

      But as the article stated, it's a first step, nowhere near close to actually making organs.
    • Well, I was thinking about Skin grafts (it's not to hard to grow a sheet of skin).
      But then I had an idea, you could print the cells straight onto the area you wanted extra skin, and they would then grow in place.

      Still can't think of anything else it would be useful for in humans, maybe making layers of different cells for bio-electric and circuits (cybernetic implants and all that).

      Bones you can already do to some extent, by mashing some bone up, forming it into the correct shape and putting it back in.

      Organs are a no go so far as growing goes, and I should imagine fibrous tissues (nerves, muscle etc..) couldn't be grown in this way and be useful, except maybe hair?
      • Actually, growing a sheet of skin is relatively easy. It's already being done, though I don't know with what success.

        Livers, kidneys, etc. are much more difficult. But a printer might solve the problem. You would probably need more than four colors of "ink" however, and it would be necessary to modify it to work in 3-D.

        I'm not really sure that printers work finely enough, but I'm certainly not sure that they don't. One of the problems is getting the blood vessels working. If you can solve that, then the rest is probably relatively easy. So one of the inks will need to be oxygenated gelatin, and one will need to be a "tougher" gelatin (so that the first time you try to circulate the blood, you don't tear the blood vessels apart before the cells connect together. Print it out at a cold temperature, and warm it no faster than you can circulate oxyegenated fluid. (Possibly that synthetic flurocarbon rather than blood to start with. I understand that it's got less surface tension, and doesn't need capillaries to circulate.)

        N.B.: IANAMD.
        • Ok, when they do bone replacements for things like the hard pallet in the roof of you mouth,
          They grind up the bone (in a coffee grinder or whatever) and add some (can't remember) that is absorbed by your body after a few weeks.

          They then press the mixture into the shape they[you] want, stitch it inplace etc...

          Anyhow, as the bone reforms the blood supply comes back quite well with capillaries where the (can't remember) used to be.

          Blood vessels on the size of kidneys may be a bit hard, as could the nephrons, and you'd still have to get ion gradients, proton pumps and all that good enough for the organ will work in the first place.

          Anything lymphy will be a nightmare, just finding a usefull medium that they will bind to to keep them alive in the first place will take a while.
  • Anyone have any ideas on what would go into a PostScript-like language for printing cells? (and other biologicals?) It would definately have a niche.

  • Lots of cell types = organ (Score:4, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @09:10AM (#5142687)
    Of course even apparently simple organs need lots of cell types - the liver needs blood vessels as well as the various types of liver cells, and even skin consists of multiple layers with different properties.And making anything which needs structural properties could be a problem - cells that need to intertwine, like muscle and bone. Not really a case for even a hexachrome cartridge.

    But the concept is really interesting for doing things like creating little insulin producing nodes for diabetics.

    Or perhaps little skin-graft packages with a cell mix that would attach to the substrate and then align themselves. Or perhaps producing really effective animal-testing substitutes.

    A few years back I spent a little time on a manufacturing think-tank. The one thing everybody agreed was needed was a device that produced objects at their final net shape with no intermediate finishing stages. An inkjet printer basically does that already in two dimensions, and it's additive. It's surely potentially much nearer-term for all sorts of things than (say) exotic silicon micro-machining, and much more process-granular.

    I wonder if - no, where - someone is trying to develop an inkjet printer that produces sintered metal shapes?

  • I think they're going to have to figure out what to do about the length of time it takes for them to print an organ(ism). Your average organ may start drying out before it's done being printed.
  • Where do they get the funding to create something like this? I can't get funding to purchase the software I need to program a simple web application let alone create something out of the box like this.

  • ...halfway through printing you'll run out of spleen.
  • Here are some companies out there which do something like this with plastic. The idea is to build, by printing, 2D images of plastic on top of each other to build a 3D object.


    The very cool thing is that you can build movable solid objects within other solid objects. We got a (not very useful) but neat adjustable wrench. The screw part of it which is used to open and close the wrench (sorry I don't know tool terms) was actually built inside of the other pieces. When looking at it you realize that if you started with individual pieces, you could never have gotten the screw part inside.

  • This is great news for the desktop hamster printing industry, but those replacement ink cartridges are going to cost!

    Best wishes,
    Mike.

  • Hello, this is straight out of the movie "Fifth Element", where they had that crazy genetic printer unit and constructed Milla with it, the perfect being.

    I don't blame them, if I had one of those printers I would be making myself a Milla as well, maybe two, always good to have a backup.

    -b
  • This is your Brain on Paper...

    Oh man there are sooo many good jokes here!

    Hey! Don't touch my monkey, he isn't dry yet!

  • Star Trek explained... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @12:00PM (#5143818) Homepage
    One of the things that always cracked my suspension of disbelief wide open was the medical technology on Star Trek. Specifically, whenever the doctor (choose your favorite) would pass a light over someone's arm and the wound would close.

    It seems to me that this could be the reality, give or take 100 years, to that dramatic device. Start with a good gash in someone's arm, something bad enough to require stitches and would leave a scar with our current technology. Doctor takes a hand held "flesh printer", that "prints" either a rejection neutral flesh cover to the wound (more Star Trek tech) or a genetically specific cover (maybe presampled and supplied in the device, or even more fancy dynamically sampled and generated).

    So muscle injuries require more involved work, but a shallow tissue wound can be fixed more or less on the fly.

    Real doctors: start your engines. What's stupid about this idea? It is of course more complicated than simply laying the skin over top; blood vessels and nerves would have to be reconnected, depending on the damage. I would appreciate a thoughtful critique.
    • "One of the things that always cracked my suspension of disbelief wide open was the medical technology on Star Trek"

      If the transporter didn't crack you suspension of disblief, then nothing should.

      If you can transport them, you can rearange them, and thus fix people. The moment the transporter was feasable, doctors should have been out of business.
      • Yeah, in fact, I think they addressed that in a DS9 episode, IIRC.

        On the other hand, if the transport involves something funky like quantum entanglement, you could transport, but not alter the object (see: quantum encryption). That doesn't explain replicators, though, which do exactly that.

        I used to scoff at the transporter, but recent stuff ("transporting" a photon) has made me a little less quick to scoff.

  • teleportation! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @12:07PM (#5143889)
    Now all we need is one of those deli meat-slicers and a good scanner and we can email ourselves around!

  • I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday January 23, 2003 @01:49PM (#5144793)
    "Yeah, I remember John. Poor guy. Died on the operating table when they had a paper jam."

    Chris Mattern
  • I hadn't heard of that either.

    Interesting applications... here [hivandhepatitis.com], and here [northwestern.edu].
  • I'm a graduate student in the University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering department and I've seen some of this work demonstrated and explained in a few presentations. There is a joint project between Dr. "Skip" Scriven and Dr. M. Flickinger that seeks to imprint cells within a fluid that may be printed onto paper or other materials using standard inkjet technology.

    Although I don't work on the project, the goal is to maintain the viability of the cells as they are mixed with the fluid and layered onto the paper. The paper may not be completely covered in cells (called confluency), but will have enough cells adhered to the paper so that numerous applications are possible:

    Biosensors: Make the cells physically respond to outside environmental stimuli, which may include pathogens, proteins, minerals, etc. Put the paper (or other material) on something that you wish to perform as a biosensor. Think super fast and cheap blood testing or a really quick and effective way to test the air for anthrax. A LOT of possibilities here.

    Reactive Materials: Have the cells absorb and metabolize certain harmful chemicals or excrete other useful chemicals. The paper (or other material) is easier to handle, distribute, and install than a solution of cells. Cells imprinted onto the paper would also be in a 'dormant' state, having a lower metabolism, utilizing less nutrients, and having a longer life-span than cells in solution. The cells would be exposed to a much larger surface area, making them more effective in uptaking chemicals from the environment.

    While I don't work on this project, I am working on a project that seeks to design the gene 'circuitry' that controls the metabolism of the cell and the function it performs. The biosensor part, the specific reactive function part. I'm purposely not going into details. :)

    Salis

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