3d Printing Case

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

The field of bioprinting, using 3D printing technology for producing live cells with extreme accuracy, could be the answer to many of the problems we as humans face in the medical field. It could be the end to organ waiting lists and an alternative for organ transplants. In 3D printing technology lies the potential to replace the testing of new drugs on animals. However, the idea of applying 3 dimensional printing to the health industry is still quite new and yet to have a major impact. Manufacturing working 3D organs remains an enormous challenge, but in theory could solve major issues present today.

In a study conducted through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on “average 79 people will receive an organ each day; however, an average of 22 people die each day” waiting for transplants that cannot take place because of the shortage of donated organs (U.S. D.H.H.S). The average amount of patients waiting for an organ can reduce to zero with the continued development of 3-D printers. 3-D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The digital file is uploaded onto a computer software, and then the 3-D printer prints the digital file out onto different materials. The materials include plastic, resin, nylon, sandstone. The finish products become replicas of the digital file, and what was an idea is now a reality. Therefore, 3-D printers will one day be the future of organ transplants because over the past twenty years the technology industry has rapidly grown into the focal point in society. From advancement in communication, to the medical field, science and technology has shaped this world today. Thus, the American Government should invest more money into the medical field budget because the research conducted on new technology (3-D Printers) leads to more lives saved, and expands the opportunity of future medical breakthroughs.

Secondly, advanced 3D printing applied to the medical field can be utilized in an Engels non capitalist technology drive society to impact the area of safety. In this utopian society, advanced 3D printing will have the capabilities to print synthetic tissue and organic tissue that can bond to the patient’s cells. In effect, this helps the patient’s wound heal faster. This type of advanced 3D bio printing can save many lives

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital have finally created a beating heart using stem cell tissue. Previous research has used 3D printing technology to create heart segments out of cellular material. These segments did not have any actual heart tissue but had the proper scaffolding to anchor growing heart tissue.

Doctors and engineers have been working on another way to get organs a faster and more efficient way. Using 3D printers can help with their problem. They have worked on using a 3D printer to make organs that are a perfect match for patients. This can be very useful it can get an organ ready in a short amount of time helping the patient recovery faster as well. Organ transplants are hard to come by. One you have to be put in a waiting list, and people are usually on that list for a long while, just waiting for a perfect match to come. But sometimes it takes to long and some people die while still on the waiting list. But when an organ finally does come they feel bad because someone had to die in order for them to use it. So Dr Ali Khademhosseini is trying to use 3D printing to help solve this problem. His theory is he can make organs from a 3D printer, which can make the waiting list decrease faster and have people not have to die in order for a perfect match. 3D printers have been used to make Human cells, tissue, and blood vessels. But making something like a heart is much more difficult. Because you have to make the beating and pumps. (Mesley). There have been problems in the past that have just know started to show in some people. "Viruses aren't the only worry, and here too the past may serve as a guide. In 1956 injections of human growth hormone became a standard therapy for children failing to develop properly. The hormone was extracted from

The purpose of this experiment is to test how scientists can most efficiently complete organ printing. In this lab, the cells will be suspended in a substrate called sodium alginate-collagen, hydrogel, and other reactants. These materials will react to then embed the cells to their goal location. Then, the cells will be able to be fixated into layers. These layers will then come together and form tissues, which according to biological organization will form organs. The inkjet bioprinter allows for this to occur. Tiny ink droplets form a digital design for the organ printing, and in horizontal sheets, the organ is created tissue by tissue. This lab will test to see which percent concentration of the sodium alginate-collagen composite will prove to be most effective when organ printing. The dependent factor that will determine the conclusion will be the percent of efficiency of cell survival rate. Four trials will be completed in which the same organ is printed and all factors are kept constant, except for the percent concentration of the substrate.

It is a mineralized connective tissue formed by osteoblasts. Osteoblasts deposit a matrix of collagen and also release calcium, magnesium and phosphate ions that chemically combine within the collagenous matrix into a crystalline mineral, known as bone mineral, in the form of HA. Therefore, bone tissue is a natural composite consisting of a collagenous matrix and a mineral phase. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new therapeutic materials with the same hybrid structure that combine the strength, stiffness and osteoconductivity of an inorganic component with the flexibility, toughness and resorbability of an organic phase.[13,14] As such, in recent years, researchers have concentrated on developing the polymer/ceramic nanocomposites, which have the advantages of both polymers (structural stability, strength, biocompatibility and desired shape) and ceramics, and are more similar to natural

One way that technology is saving lives in my generation is by 3-D printing. This printing process has helped surgeons save the lives of their patients. In 2012 one team of surgeons located in Ann Arbor, Michigan successfully 3-D printed an artificial airway splint that saved the life of a three-month-old baby whom had lost the ability to breathe.

Speaker Credibility: For two years, I was an intern and a lab assistant at A&T University in North Carolina. While there I worked with engineers to develop various lab grown tissues in hopes of helping the public. While there, my lab team worked in accordance with Wake Forest University’s labs. At Wake, Dr. Anthony Atala and his team were growing functional organs using stents and cells.

The development of 3D printing has greatly impacted the medical field, more specifically knee replacements. With the new development of 3D printing, patients have experienced a shorter recovery time, less pain, and more mobility.

Anthony Atala, in his 2011 Ted Talk, Printing a Human Kidney, tells of printing a bladder. He explains that they use a small piece of the patients original bladder. They then print a scaffold and let the cells grow on the scaffolding in an “oven like device” that has the “same conditions as the human body -- 37 degrees centigrade, 95 percent oxygen” Weeks later, the organ has grown and it is ready to be placed in the patient. Atala explains that “For these specific patients, we actually just suture these materials. We use three-dimensional imagining analysis, but we actually created these biomaterials by hand.”Luke Massella, a patient who received a 3D printed organ because he was born with spina bifida that prevented his bladder and kidneys

The improvements made in the medical field such as surgical procedures, equipment and outcomes have been nothing but extraordinary. In this day, we have been able to experience the almost impossible medical advancements. Starting from an ancient Babylonian and a Greek physician, we are now in the verge of developing printable 3-D organs and 3-D virtual reality models of fetuses. These 3-D organs and models are an excellent source for any organ transplants, internal and external prosthesis, further experimentation on disease development and prevention, and finally, aid in assessing fetus abnormalities to prevent many other possible medical complications. All of these factors also affect the amount of reimbursement received based on the impact on medical cost such as length of surgery, type and quantity of equipment needed to perform these procedures or printings, required medical staff to assist in surgical procedure, types of medications or therapies required after surgery and patients length of the stay. Three Dimensional printing is becoming one of the next biggest advancements in modern medicine, helping physicians and scientist achieve many more successful outcomes with their patients.

There are over 11.4 million amputees worldwide in need of prosthetic limbs. Traditional methods of producing prosthetics limit availability due to cost and durability. While the technology is still very new and not well developed, 3D-printing is the future of prosthetic limbs. 3D-printed prosthetic limbs may be printed with different materials, and provide quick production with a lower cost, which can increase the availability of prosthetic limbs to more amputees.

With the very limited supply of organs, 3D printing creates functioning organs without a donation from a living organism. The definition of 3D printing from Charles W. Hull, the inventor of 3D systems, states that “...thin layers of a material that can be cured with ultraviolet light were sequentially printed in layers to form a solid 3D structure” (Murphy & Atala 773). The sheer narrow sheets play a vital role in bioprinting. They allow the printers to develop functional, layering individual cells, proteins, and an extracellular matrix. The three basic types of 3D printing include biomimicry, independent self- assembly, and miniature tissue blocks. The creation of the 3D structure creates all the difference between these types of printing. Three dimensional structure approaches include, creating exact duplicates of the cells and tissues with extensive knowledge, using a developing embryo as a template or using microscopic tissues to assemble into a larger developed tissue (Kalaskar). In other words, all these paths to bioprinting end up with a 3D structure but require different knowledge and materials. They all contain their own sets of challenges.