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According to NewScientist’s Richard Fisher a new inkjet printer device that prints tiny living tissues is out. In his article it is even claimed that surgeons one day can use the technology to repair various damaged tissues at the same time.
Inkjet technology uses a fine stream of droplets to build structures and is employed across many industries – from computer chip design to large scale manufacturing.
It also has biomedical applications: researchers use it to place very precise amounts of biological material, on the microscale. For example, some groups have used the technology to print cells, and “build” organs.
Here is what the researchers says in Richard Fisher’s article: "Previously researchers have been limited to directing stem cells to differentiate towards multiple lineages in separate culture vessels," says team member Phil Campbell. "The inkjet printing technology allows us to precisely engineer multiple unique microenvironments by patterning bio-inks that could promote differentiation towards multiple lineages simultaneously."
According an earlier article from Peter Aldhous, in University of Missouri they even printed chicken heart cells using a printer. In the article, Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his "bioprinting" technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid. This means that droplets placed next to one another will flow together and fuse, forming layers, rings or other shapes, depending on how they were deposited. To print 3D structures, Forgacs and his colleagues alternate layers of supporting gel, dubbed "biopaper", with the bioink droplets.
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