For a few years I’ve been reading about technology that enables doctors to “print” human organs for transplants. Unlike the traditional sources for transplant organs (willing donors and cadavers), 3D printers would enable patients in need to receive organs without having to wait on a list, as well as produce organs created from the patients’ own cells, which would eliminate the risk of rejection.
Now two companies have partnered to bring the first commercial organ printer to the market, which will retail for about $200,000:
To start with, only simple tissues, such as skin, muscle and short stretches of blood vessels, will be made, says Keith Murphy, Organovo’s chief executive, and these will be for research purposes. Mr Murphy says, however, that the company expects that within five years, once clinical trials are complete, the printers will produce blood vessels for use as grafts in bypass surgery. With more research it should be possible to produce bigger, more complex body parts. Because the machines have the ability to make branched tubes, the technology could, for example, be used to create the networks of blood vessels needed to sustain larger printed organs, like kidneys, livers and hearts.
The article notes that future applications of this technology may even enable doctors to engineer effective replacement organs that aren’t exact copies of the original, so long as they do the same job. Of course, if we can re-engineer organs, wouldn’t that enable us to improve their function over the originals, as well?