Printing Up Blood Vessels

[3113]

No shit! From here:

Until now, the stumbling block in tissue engineering has been supplying artificial tissue with nutrients that have to arrive via capillary vessels. A team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has solved that problem using 3D printing and a technique called multiphoton polymerization.

...To print something as small and complex as a blood vessel, the scientists combined the 3D printing technology with two-photon polymerisation - shining intense laser beams onto the material to stimulate the molecules in a very small focus point. The material then becomes an elastic solid, allowing the researchers to create highly precise and elastic structures that would be able to interact with a human body's natural tissue.

What will they print up next?

 

[Handley_Page]

No shit! From here:


What will they print up next?

I've seen on TV when they printed an adjustable wrench - that worked !

 

[estragon]

Does anybody remember Karel Capek's play R.U.R.? It told the story of Rossum's Universal Robots, that replaced people. The last line in the play was: "It was a great thing once--to be a man."

Life imitating art--again?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

No, this is more like Lazarus Long. Tissue engineering is to let us grow replacement organs from our own cells thus removing the need for anti-rejection meds. Get the new book 100+. It looks like some of us are going to be really hard to get rid of . . .

 

[TE999]

Why didn't I invest in the Haloid Photographic Company when I had the chance? *sob*