Liver tissue was printed in 3D for the first time
At the Experimental Biology 2013 congress held on March 20-24 in Boston, Massachusetts, the chief executive officer of Organovo, Keith Murphy, stated that the company's specialists managed to achieve the full functioning of three-dimensional liver tissue created using the NovoGen bioprinting method patented by the company.
For the first time, the use of this method made it possible to obtain truly three-dimensional samples of liver tissue, the thickness of which reaches 0.5 millimeters. These samples consist of several types of cells, the arrangement of which repeats the structures that are the main components of the architecture of liver tissue.
According to Dr. Sharon Presnell, chief Technical Officer and deputy president of the company for Research and Development, the tissue samples created by the company for the first time are not a monolayer, but a structure consisting of 20 layers of cells. Moreover, they consist exclusively of living cells and the proteins they produce, while their three-dimensionality does not depend on the use of additional biomaterials or frameworks. They really look and function like real living tissue, and also perform basic liver functions, including the synthesis of albumin, fibrinogen, transferrin and cholesterol. In addition, they provide the induced enzymatic activity of cytochrome P450. In all these parameters, three-dimensional liver tissue samples are significantly superior to earlier versions obtained using two-dimensional bioprinting.
All this makes the liver tissue created with the help of new technology an excellent material for studying the metabolism of experimental drugs. Moreover, the development of a new method of three-dimensional bioprinting brings us one step closer to creating full-size organs for transplantation to patients whose liver has lost its functionality for some reason.
Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of Organovo:
Organovo Describes First Fully Cellular 3D Bioprinted Liver Tissue.
25.04.2013