Scientists Aim To 'Print' Human Skin 77
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from CNN:
"Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, inspired by standard inkjet printers found in many home offices, are developing a specialized skin 'printing' system that could be used in the future to treat soldiers wounded on the battlefield. 'We started out by taking a typical desktop inkjet cartridge. Instead of ink we use cells, which are placed in the cartridge,' said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the institute. The device could be used to rebuild damaged or burned skin. ... Burn injuries account for 5% to 20% of combat-related injuries, according to the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The skin printing project is one of several projects at Wake Forest largely funded by that institute, which is a branch of the US Department of Defense. Wake Forest will receive approximately $50 million from the Defense Department over the next five years to fund projects, including the skin-creating system. Researchers developed the skin 'bio-printer' by modifying a standard store-bought printer. One modification is the addition of a three-dimensional 'elevator' that builds on damaged tissue with fresh layers of healthy skin."
And next, the "enhancements"... (Score:1)
Re:And next, the "enhancements"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Viagra was initially researched by Pfizer as a treatment for angina, and just happened to fix erectile dysfunction *really well*. That doesn't make Pfizer sleazy, just like plastic surgeons aren't sleazy for giving a chick bigger tits if she wants them. Don't lie to yourself, you're judged on your physical appearance (or, in this case, "proportions"). Who cares if guys buying bigger dicks fund the R&D for regenerative medicine? Money is money.
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The article said,
"Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, inspired by standard inkjet printers found in many home offices, are developing a specialized skin 'printing' system"
So, I pulled up an old Newspaper article from 15250 BC (amazing what Google has scanned in to date!), and it had this:
"Grog and Togoth at the second cave after the boulder, inspired by standard sprayed blood found in caves, are developing a specialized skin 'printing' system."
They also had a solution for Male
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Oh definitely, until of course, y'know... The immune system starts attacking the foreign cells. That might be a small bump on the road.
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How about restoring said parts to the way they SHOULD be? Circumcision reversal, here we go!
The printers will be cheap. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The printers will be cheap. (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait a second... (Score:1)
This is just the industrial military complex finding better ways to kill brown people.
Oh wait...
Re:Wait a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but it only prints white skin. The color ink cartridges are WAY too expensive.
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Other pleasant thoughts. (Score:2)
Inkjet? (Score:5, Funny)
The device sells for $49.95, but if you want a refill of skin cells, that's $500. And if you buy refills from a third party, they'll charge you with a DMCA violation. It's a perfectly legitimate business model.
the courts said that DMCA can not be used to lock (Score:2)
the courts said that DMCA can not be used to lock out 3rd party ink.
Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
We've got a better one already made. It's nothing more than a fancy airbrush and heals burn wounds MUCH faster than this device.
http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/news/article.asp?qEmpID=328 [pitt.edu]
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)
Spraying fluids and/or particle/fluid aerosols with greater or lesser precision is a basically solved problem. Yours for $50 at Best Buy or your local hobby shop. Yawn.
Stimulating high-speed tissue regrowth, without it turning into a horrible mass of scar tissue and/or cancer, on the other hand, is the cutting edge bit. Mammalian tissue regeneration is rather more conservative than we would like, leading to permanent loss of tissue and limbs, and ugly scarring; but naive stimulation of cell growth, or introduction of pluripotent cells, has an ugly habit of reminding you why that level of conservatism turned out to be evolutionarily adaptive...
Once you solve the hard problem of producing a safe and effective cell/drug/nutrient/whatever slurry that does what you want it to do, it likely barely matters if you use an inkjet, an airbrush, a paintbrush, or just finger-paint it on. The "ink" is the interesting bit.
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Yep! Until you can prove the genome of the cells used in the ink are all 100% cancer-free, count me out. However, for a burn victim whose only other treatment option is infection and a slow death, I might be willing to give it a shot.
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Potential (Score:3)
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Hell, how about adding a layer of skin with a kevlar weave or something similar.
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As the grafting process becomes more seamless, I wonder if it might be put to other uses, like tattoo removal. Or even applying tattoos.
That is exactly what I was thinking, that, in a few years time this is going to be the growth business of all time and all those tattooed kiddies hit 30 and try to get real jobs, instead of working at Starbucks or Kinkos.
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Not improvements - injuries... (Score:2)
TFA is talking about "5% to 20% of combat-related injuries" - not the number of grafts that are successful.
As for why does it vary that much...
Well, data mentioned is probably taken from a source that lists various ways a soldier could be hurt - compared to various duties and services.
So, pilots might have much greater incidence of falling from a high place and breaking various bones than say.. a cook.
On another hand, drivers probably have a much higher incidence of various car accident related injuries tha
Spray-on skin (Score:5, Informative)
This reminds me of spray-on skin for burn victims
http://gizmodo.com/#!5749968/spray+on-skin-is-a-reality?comment=36596030 [gizmodo.com]
That just blew me away. Instead of weeks of painful recovery and permanent disfigurement, the burn victim is treated in about a week with little or no scarring.
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Why isn't it clear from that video what before-and-after look like?
Cost (Score:2)
Yes, but would it be cheaper to print a page with a skin cartridge or with an ink cartridge?
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Don't give HP ideas, or we'll have printer insurance lobbyists all over state legislatures by summertime.
Re:PC Load Letter? (Score:2)
The important question (Score:1)
Rep Rap Human? (Score:1)
Perhaps if you include the HOX proteins in a separate "color" cartridge you could print random critters.
Re:I'm sick tired (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you bothered to use your brain for a 2#$!% minute, you would realize a few things:
1) Soldiers are not out there because they wanted to, they decided to serve their country so you could stay home and play your video games. If they did not sign up in enough numbers, they would force you to serve as soon as they run out of volunteers. Remember every time that a soldier gets killed or looses his legs because of a bomb, that it could had been you out there had he and many others not volunteered.
2) It is g
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If you bothered to use your brain for a 2#$!% minute, you would realize a few things:
1) Soldiers are not out there because they wanted to, they decided to serve their country so you could stay home and play your video games. If they did not sign up in enough numbers, they would force you to serve as soon as they run out of volunteers. Remember every time that a soldier gets killed or looses his legs because of a bomb, that it could had been you out there had he and many others not volunteered.
Or cause it is the only job they can get as there are not that many opportunities around. Or to pay for college. Or cause they are members of the Green Card Brigade. [military.com]
As for "your ass there instead" - there is always Canada. That is, unless your dad can arrange for you to "serve" behind a desk somewhere.
Or to dick around in a military jet. [wikipedia.org]
2) It is good to know military budget goes into medical research that can also be used to save civilians in, say, burning buildings and not entirely to develop new guns and bombs.
$9.7 billion budget [army.mil] divided over 5 million beneficiaries, 27,000 soldiers and 28,000 civilian employees, another 20,000 active-duty medical soldiers in field units, plus o
Would be nice if they could print other organs... (Score:3)
Re:Would be nice if they could print other organs. (Score:5, Informative)
Other universities, including Cornell University and the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, are working on similar projects...These university researchers say organs -- not just skin -- could be printed using similar techniques.
So, they're working on it
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Wake Forest has already demonstrated printing organs from a modified ink jet printer. I'm not sure why the article makes it sound like the idea is exclusive to other universities. Here's a short clip from NOVA on this very topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeJPBuBEJ50
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Skin(in addition to being an attractive target because it gets damaged a lot and ugly scarring tends to be psychologically problematic) has the advantage of (comparatively) simple geometry. It is a fairly thin membrane with(again comparatively) limited and homogeneous vascular structur
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Is this not obsolete alredy? (Score:2)
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NatGeo (assuming the video is not a fake) reporting on something gives it serious credence. The Skin Gun looks like it's absolutely amazing, and will nearly eliminate many of the problems faced by many burn victims.
Screw printing skin with an inkjet (which is kind of a silly idea anyway since skin is in no way a nice flat plane, and you really want to be printing directly onto the body which is also essentially never planar, and the operating distance for inkjet printers is really, really small, making han
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Bound and Printed in Human Skin (Score:2)
Buffalo Bill (Score:2)
Please Release to Civilians (Score:4, Insightful)
One small step ... (Score:2)
to molecular printing and the Star Trek economy (without the warp drive, tractor beam, and transporter).
I remember seeing a BBC (?) video somewhere about some research lab printing some human organ prototypes. The prototypes weren't functional in themselves but supposedly will be used as scaffolding for embedded heart/lung/etc sells to grow on, thus requiring the success of another technology, stem cell manipulation.