Answers to Everyday Questions : What is bioprinting

One of the new areas of research and engineering is bioprinting, which deals with the printing of devices that dump biological materials. The lasting aim is for the technology to create organ replacements or even replacements for entire organisms out of raw biological materials.

Nowadays, the utilization of bioprinters is specifically as scientific tools and still in the development stage. The day of the completely functional bioprinting is almost at hand; however, the creators lack fine-tuning and speed needed for commercial deployment. The first bioprinters deposited as little as 100 picoliters at the rate of tens of thousands per second. Newer bioprinters are capable of excruding individual cells from micropipette with a lower speed.

Biophysicist Gabor Forgacs developed bioprinter with the use of biopaper and bioink combionation to produces complex 3D structures even if not at cellular resolution. Running at 10 kHz or 10,000 dots per seconds, a printer with 100 picoliter can produce 60 micriliters of tissue each minute or 86 milliliters per day, which the quantity of tissue almost filling a regular test tube. Low resolution is the only draw back of printers with 100 picoliters – most organic tissue are known with needed accurate cell-level organization to operate properly.

When Forgacs utilized single-celled resolution with a micropipette approach, they were able to generate functional, living tissue that acted like the organ where it originated. For instance, when they deposit chicken heart cells onto a dish using a bioprinter, it will start to beat synchronously. Given a detailed resolution map of the cellular constructions in the human heart, there are no original barriers between going from this simple bioprinters to the one that can print out full human organs within a year or two.

Throughout science fictions, you will be able to see the existence of bioprinters. Like in the film “the fifth element”, the main character’s body was created using the process of biopringting. There are even speculations that bioprinting can lead to immortality; however, it is uncertain due to the complexity of preventing disturbing surface cells when the old cells are being replaced.