3 D Scaffolds

Many of us have all heard the saying that a “lizard can lose its tail,” and bizarrely enough it will grow back. This was always considered impossible for humans, an idea belonging in the realm of science fiction, but now the regeneration of tissue is an extremely realistic possibility. Despite some opinions, this process does not happen naturally, or take place as cinematically as one might imagine. Over the past decade, there have been major advances in regenerative medicine, commonly known as stem cell research. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells within the body that have the capability to specialize into any tissue. They are most commonly found in cord blood, bone marrow, organ donations, placenta, and embryos . Stem cells are seen by some as a new miracle treatment, encouraging many countries to invest in their research.

Tissue engineering is an emerging interdisciplinary field that uses principles from engineering, biology and chemistry in an effort towards tissue regeneration. The main draw of tissue engineering is the regeneration of a patient’s own tissues and organs free from low biofunctionality and poor biocompatibility and serious immune rejection. As medical care continues to improve and life expectancy continues to grow, organ shortages become more problematic.(Manufacturing living things) According to organdonor.gov, a patient is added to the waiting list every 10 minutes and an average of 18 people die everyday waiting for an organ donation. The “nirvana” of tissue engineering is to replace the need for organ donation altogether. This could be achieved using scaffolding from

Heart failure affects nearly 6 million Americans. It is the leading cause of hospitalization in people older than 65. Roughly 550,000 people are diagnosed with heart failure each year (Emory Healthcare, 2014). Heart failure is a pathologic state where the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the demand of the body’s metabolic needs or when the ventricle’s ability to fill is impaired. It is not a disease, but rather a complex clinical syndrome. The symptoms of heart failure come from pulmonary vascular congestion and inadequate perfusion of the systemic circulation. Individuals experience orthopnea,

The stem cells were engineered from typical skin cells. This technique means that heart patients would not have to worry about rejection. Their new hearts would be made of their own cells.

SINcE I hAVE ALwAYS BEEN INTErESTEd in science and technology, I subscribed to many research magazines, including Popular Science and Scientific American. However, until 10th grade, I never had the opportunity to contribute to medical research—something that I had always wanted to do. Then, one day I read an article titled “Print Me a Pancreas, Please” in Popular Science, which described novel tissue engineering research involving modification of off-the-shelf inkjet printers to print out living cells in a “bioink” solution. Having read much about tissue engineering, I realized this “organ printing” approach could potentially address problems of traditional tissue engineering methods, such as the need to precisely place specific cell types in 3D scaffolds. I was so excited that I came up with a few ideas of my own about advancing the

Reduction of heart failure has been looked at in a number of ways, some with reduction of

To prepare the injectable ECM hydrogel, ventricular porcine myocardium will be decellularized with SDS and processed into an injectable solution through lyophilization and partial pepsin digestion (Singelyn et al. 2009; Singelyn et al. 2012). Final solubilized myocardial matrix will be brought to pH 8 and kept on ice until gelation. Fluorinated PCL beads will be fabricated by mixing a liquid PCL solution with 0.14 M pentadecafluorooctanoyl chloride. After mixing at low speed for 24 hours at room temperature, the solution will be dialyzed, lyophilized, and exposed to UV light (365 nm) to polymerize into beads (Wijekoon et al. 2013). Prior to combination with the solubilized myocardial matrix, the PCL beads need to be placed in an aseptic oxygen chamber (7.5 x 6.0 x 4.0 cm3; O2 flow rate, 5 mL/hour) for oxygen saturation. Afterwards, the oxygenated fluorinated PCL beads should be immediately combined with the solubilized myocardial matrix to form the liquid hydrogel precursor

Medicine has benefitted for years from advancements in technology and research. Technology combined with research has allowed, once crazy and impractical, ideas to be put into action to treat, heal and even cure many diseases and illnesses to improve or ensure a long quality of life for patients. Continuation of medical technology and research is vital and offers many potential cures, especially through regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine involves tissue engineering and biology to generate human tissues like cells and organs to restore the normal function within those said cells and organs. Stem cells have a huge role in regenerative

“A 3D printer is a computer run machine, which has the ability to print out objects layer by layer” (Griggs Para.1). The new advancement is a 3D organ printer that will print out human organs using embryonic stem cells. “To complete this process first scientist harvest stem cells, allowing them to double in a petri dish. The stem cell mixture can then be placed into a 3D printer, which is encoded to create an organ” (Griggs Para. 8). The technology for bioprinting isn’t yet complete but within the next few years bioprinting will be a real possibility. With the help of bioprinting, patients who have been waiting on organ transplant lists will no longer have to wait month or years for a compatible organ. Organ transplant wait times could be shortened days. With the use of this technology, “people who would once have to wait in anticipation on whether or not they would even receive an organ, will have the ability to get a brand new organ print from their own cells” (Hsu Para.2). Recently, a group of scientist tested a similar process by bioengineering a trachea for piglets made from the stem cells of different piglets (Castillo Para. 4). It was concluded, “three months after the bioengineered trachea was planted, the baby pig tripled in weight and doubled in size" (Castillo Para. 4). This proves the bioengineered trachea caused no harm to the piglet; it allowed them to grow and mature the

(What normal daily roles does fgf play in our bodies daily?) Tissue designing, with critical research contributions in the course of the most recent decades has risen as a potential device to recover harmed and

This study that was published revealed that scientists are believing this is possible because they have invented a 3D printing machine that is capable of printing cartilage. As the Discovery News tells it, this printer is being dubbed the Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System and it could be the printer of the future. What the scientists are planning on doing could lead to synthetic organs being in development. If Michael Jackson was still alive, I am sure he would be salivating at the mouth at the thought of this.

Thrombosis has been regarded as a main hurdle in transplantable whole organ engineered grafts. Therefore, an optimal recellularization methods would be at the forefront of diminishing thrombosis in the long term. In practice, lack of re-endothelialization of the heterotopic transplanted heart induced thrombosis [54]. H. Kitahara and colleagues have recently demonstrated the first heterotopic transplantation of an acellular and recellularized of the whole porcine heart fabricating by the perfusion system. They have administered two potential recellularization procedure to determine which of them contributed to prevent thrombosis. The first one was a coronary perfusion technique, in which the cell was delivered evenly throughout the whole heart. The second other method was a direct injection of the cell source. In that report, a whole porcine heart initially perfused with 1% SDS 1% triton X100 was added to remove cell debris, the process took less time (13h) as compared to the time required in another

As the population ages heart failure is expected to increase exceptionally. About twenty-two percent of men and forty-four percent of women will develop heart failure within six years of having a heart attack. “Thirty years ago patients would have died from their heart attacks!” (Couzens)

Andree, C., et al. “Gene Technology and Tissue Engineering.” Minimally Therapy & Allied Technologies 11.3 (2002): 93-99. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 March 2014.

Endothelial cells derived from induced human pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-ECs) are a promising candidate for enhancing the treatment of ischemic tissues. However, current understanding of the microenvironmental factors involved in endothelial differentiation is limited, leading to low cell survival following transplantation. Ultimately this masks the therapeutic potential of stem cells and regenerative medicine. To address this limitation, research published in Acta Biomaterialia examined the role of combinatorial extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins on endothelial