Printable Organs
Felix Hindarto, Kirti Anindita Suharsono & Alvian Gunawan
Faculty Medicine of Atma Jaya
Indonesia
Three-dimensional printing is creating a 3D structure. It was first developed in the
early 1990s at MIT by using a regular ink-jet print head. In a recent medical field, this
method is used for creating living tissues and replacing the damaged ones, for example
bone, skin, and other tissues.
This whole process of 3D printing is made in vitro. The scaffold is made to match
the extracellular matrix. Multi-potent stromal cells (MSC) then injected into the scaffold
before implantation so that the duplicate tissue can “survive” in the body. The traditional
tissue engineering strategy is to isolate stem cells from small tissue samples, mix them with
growth factors, multiply them in the laboratory, and seed the cells onto scaffolds that direct
cell proliferation and differentiation into functioning tissues.
In 2009, 154,324 patients in the U.S. were waiting for an organ and only 27,996
of them (18%) received an organ transplant, and 8,863 (25 per day) died while on the
waiting list. If this problem can be solved, fulfilling the demands can also reduce this
mortality number efficiently. Printing complex organs have not been developed completely.
Complex organs have a specific metabolic mechanisms in which cannot function
properly without vascularization. Three-dimensional printing lets us produce custom-made
medical products and equipment cheaply by decreasing the use of unnecessary resourc es.
Doctors and patients can have a positive impact in terms of the time required for surgery.
Patients will have more recovery time, and success of the surgery or implant as the
progenitor cells are taken from the patients themselves so the transplant rejection can be
minimized. “Fast” in 3D printing means that a product can be made within several hours
with high resolution, accuracy, reliability, and repeatability of
3D printing technologies. So, no more waiting in line to save lives!
Contact Name: Felix Hindarto,
e-mail: hindarto_felix@yahoo.com,
Phone: +6287851662272