Organ Repair

Scientists are working on a new way to repair organs. As this ScienCentral News video reports, they're trying to build replacement parts using a three-dimensional printer.

Printing Organs

At the bottom of the basement stairs in the physics building at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and just to the left, there is a brown steel door marked "Research." Behind it fluorescent lights hum, a miniature guillotine clicks, and a printer paces back and forth.

But this is no mad scientist's den, nor is it a traditional physics laboratory. Here researchers, led by biological physicist Gabor Forgacs are developing a three-dimensional printing technique that may one day be used to engineer replacement parts for worn-out or diseased organs. It is a method they hope will ultimately reduce the number of whole organ transplants needed by providing patients with just the spare parts they need.

"In twenty years," says University of Washington Department of Surgery burn specialist Nicole Gibran, "This may be what we're doing."

"The primary manifestation of this technology," says Forgacs, "perhaps in practice, will be grafts, skin grafts, vascular grafts, and the like, but not necessarily complicated organs as in livers or hearts."
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