Trachea from the printer
Bioengineers have printed the trachea on a 3D printer for the first time
Anna Govorova, Infox.ru
A group of scientists from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York) for the first time managed to print a miniature tracheal frame made of biodegradable polymers on a bioprinter, Infox reports.
Scientists seeded the printed frame with human stem cells isolated from bone marrow – so the surface of the frame was covered with a layer of epithelial cells. Then the trachea was implanted into a laboratory animal with damaged airways, and the trachea successfully took root, and the animal was able to breathe independently.
The authors presented the results of their work at the annual conference of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery, which takes place in Seattle.
Now scientists are working on creating a technology that would allow printing tracheas and transplanting them to people suffering from serious damage to the respiratory tract.
"We are very pleased with our first results and hope to continue these studies. The possibility of creating organs using bioprinting from biodegradable materials and based on the patient's own stem cells is a new direction of regenerative medicine, and this direction has a great future. The creation of such trachea can help many patients with serious respiratory tract injuries," says one of the authors of the study, Associate Professor Faiz Bhora, head of the Department of thoracic surgery at Mount Sinai, in a press release 3D–Printed Trachea among Key Mount Sinai Research Presented at the American Association for Thoracic Surgery Meeting.
Currently, 3D printing technology in medicine is rapidly developing and is already helping doctors save patients' lives.
For example, in 2012, at the University of Michigan clinic, a 20-month-old child was successfully implanted with a frame for a bronchus printed on a 3D bioprinter according to an individual design.
Kaiba Gionfriddo suffered from a rare disease – tracheobronchomalacia. Such patients find it difficult to breathe, they may develop chronic inflammation or pathological changes in the lungs. The disease is very difficult to treat. The boy regularly had respiratory arrest, and he could die at any moment. Kaiba's doctors and parents turned to specialists at the University of Michigan and received help. The frame for the bronchus was created by Associate Professor Glenn E. Green and Professor Scott J. Hollister. A year after the operation, when it became clear that the transplantation of the printed frame was successful and the little patient was not in danger, Green and Hollister, together with colleagues, published an article with the results of their work in the New England Journal of Medicine.
These scientists have previously used the technology of three-dimensional bioprinting to create the ear and nose (cartilaginous tissues) and bone reconstruction (vertebral processes, skull bones and tubular limb bones). However, while these technologies are at the preclinical stage of research.
With the help of 3D bioprinters, scientists have learned how to create not only cartilage and bone tissues, but also tissue structures of skin and blood vessels. Again, it is too early to talk about the introduction of these technologies into clinical practice.
But more recently, Russian scientists led by Professor Vladimir Mironov managed to print the thyroid gland of a mouse on a 3D bioprinter for the first time. Moreover, they used live cells for this. The printed gland consists not only of functional thyroid cells – follicles, but is also entwined with a network of blood vessels. According to Vladimir Mironov, the future of regenerative medicine lies precisely in the bioprinting of organs with living cells and, most importantly, their vascularization.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru06.05.2015