About 120,000 people in the U.S. are on a waiting list for an organ donation and every day 22 of those people will die because there aren’t enough available organs. To overcome this organ donor crisis, bioengineers are working hard to develop 3D printing technologies that can construct tissues and organs from scratch by using … Continue reading 3D printing blood vessels: a key step to solving the organ donor crisis
“They have managed to create what appears to be the goose that really does lay golden eggs!” That was how UK surgeon Martin Birchall described it to BBC News. The goose in this case is a 3D bioprinter, and the golden eggs are the human sized tissues that the bioprinter successfully constructed. This breakthrough for … Continue reading Meet ITOP: A One Stop Shop for 3D Printing Body Parts
One of the Holy Grails of stem cell research is growing body parts to replace those damaged by disease or injury. Enormous strides have been made in a key first step: mastering recipes for maturing stem cells into various specialized cell types. But a lawn of, say, liver cells in a petri dish is not … Continue reading 3D Printing Cells with DNA Velcro
When most people think of stem cells, they might conjure up an image of small dots under a microscope. It is hard to imagine these small specs being applied to three-dimensional structures. But like a pointillism painting, such as A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat, stem cells can … Continue reading From organs to muscle tissue: how stem cells are being used in 3D
Spinal cord injuries (SCIs) affect approximately 300,000 Americans, with about 18,000 new cases occurring per year. One of these patients, Jake Javier, who we have written about many times over the past several years, received ten million stem cells as part of a CIRM-funded clinical trial and a video about his first year at Cal … Continue reading Using 3D printer to develop treatment for spinal cord injury
Approximately 300,000 people in the United States live with spinal cord injury (SCI), and 17,000 new cases are reported every year. With no cure, the primary treatment option for people with SCI is rehabilitation with a physical therapist combined with medications to control the pain. Given the relatively permanent nature of these injuries, a new … Continue reading 3D printed neuronal networks are an important step forward in treating spinal cord injury
Blood cells were genetically modified to glow with green fluorecence when they converted to stem cells Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun. A new type of stem cell and a new … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: caveats on acid-bath stem cells, 3-D printing and lung disease
The words “breakthrough” and “revolutionary” are overused in the media for many stories, and particularly for medical ones, but it’s hard not to search for something powerful and descriptive when you hear how doctors in Ohio used a 3D printer to create a new windpipe that saved the life of a baby boy. (Here’s a … Continue reading Doctors use 3D printer to create windpipe and save baby’s life
(Photo : Frank Wojciechowski) Friends, Romans, Countrymen, print me an ear! It may not exactly be what Shakespeare had in mind but it’s what engineers at Princeton have done, using a 3D printer to create an artificial ear that they say can “hear’ radio frequencies beyond the range of normal humans. The work, which is … Continue reading Now hear this – 3D printer creates artificial ear
The human cardiovascular system is an intricate, complex network of blood vessels that include arteries, capillaries and veins. These structures distribute blood from the heart to all parts of the body, from our head to our toes, and back again. This week, two groups of scientists published studies showing that they can create key components … Continue reading One day, scientists could grow the human cardiovascular system from stem cells
