Political power grows out of the nozzle of a 3-D Printer.
Posted on 11/09/2013 7:21:32 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A group of US scientists have created the world’s smallest human liver which can survive for forty days and works like the real thing – using a 3D printer.
The mini-livers, made by California-based medical research company Organvo, are just half a millimetre deep and four millimetres wide but can perform most of the functions that a real liver can.
The printer builds up 20 layers of hepatocytes cells, which carry out liver functions, along with two major types of liver cell. It also adds cells from the lining of a blood vessel. This allows the liver cells to receive nutrients and oxygen.
The most recent liver created survived for 40 days in the lab, which might not seem very long as human liver cells are replaced every 300 to 500 days, but the company’s previous mini-liver only survived for five days.
Keith Murphy, Organovo’s chief executive officer said: ‘In April we were able to show that liver function was retained in our 3D liver for over five days, and we have now demonstrated that our tissues perform consistently for at least 40 days, a significant improvement over the average 48 hour performance of 2D cultures.’
While research is in the early stages, scientists believe that future versions could be used for transplants.
Political power grows out of the nozzle of a 3-D Printer.
/johnny
So, will they be able to “print” a patient a new hand or leg someday?
Sounds like it.
This is worthy of a toast to good health!
That’s AWESOME! (I’m gonna print it a shot of Makers Mark, just to tease it.)
are you on a waiting list?....
What about a new Brain?
A liver, sure.
But can we print up an actual AMERICAN PRESIDENT?!!?
Between this, and that study where they transplanted memories from one rat to another, how long before it becomes possible to print a copy of a person, mind and all?
/johnny
Now print me a new replacement heart valve. The mechanical one ticks away like a clock (I actually get “your watch is loud” comments), but I’d rather have something derived from my own cells.
Do they taste good with onions?
That 3-D technology is positively viral.
Wake me up when it makes more churches, more doctors and researchers doing real science, more fully intact American families, more motorbikes, more brains, more militiamen, more drug manufacturers, more American engineers and so on. Otherwise I could care less.
Now if they can 3-D print me a lifetime supply of Leinenkugel’s beer with that new liver...
Seriously? You expect a printer to be a magical djinn? Isn’t that stretching it? Can’t you just be happy for those who may have their lives saved by this new technology? If the churches were doing their jobs, there’d be more than enough of them already. No “magic” can make up for Americans not taking “hard” math and science courses in high school and therefore not being prepared to study engineering in college. The government bureaucrats are the reason there are not more drug manufacturers, not some machine.
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