Scientists use 3D printing to create heart
Ryan W. Miller
USA TODAY
A team of Israeli scientists “printed” a heart with a patient’s own cells in a world first, researchers said.
Past researchers had been able to print simple tissues without blood vessels, the team said. This development was the first time “anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers,” Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University told The Jerusalem Post.
Dvir and his team reported their findings Monday in Advanced Science.
The heart, about the size of a rabbit’s, is too small for a human, but the process used to create it shows the potential for one day being able to 3Dprint patches and maybe full transplants, the team said. Because the heart is made from the patient’s own biological material, it reduces the chance the transplant would fail, according to the research paper.
The team used fatty tissues, then separated and “reprogrammed” the cellular and acellular materials. Stem cells were then created that become heart cells.
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