Scientist Believe we will print Whole Hearts within 10 years!

[Eddie]

This in my opinion is great news. If we can print whole working hearts within 10 years, that probably means we will be able to print other working organs, arteries, etc. Pretty much means that most diseases will be curable.

3D printed human hearts could be a reality within 10 years, scientist claims

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Scientists could be able to 3D print human hearts within the next ten years.
A team of experts has claimed they will be able to make whole hearts for use in transplant surgery using the recipients’ cells within a decade.
Dr Stuart Williams claims he and his colleagues have already created a coronary artery and that they have 3D printed some of the small blood vessels in the heart.
‘America put a man on the Moon in less than a decade. I said a full decade to provide some wiggle room,’ Dr Williams, from the University of Louisville, told Wired.co.uk
He told the website: ‘These studies have reached the advanced preclinical stage showing printed blood vessels will reconnect with the recipient tissue creating new blood flow in the printed tissue.’
The team at the University of Louisville’s Cardiovascular Innovation Institute is developing special 3D printers for the creation of artificial hearts.
They will initially be used to print individual component parts of a heart but the team believe they will eventually be able to print the whole organ in about three hours.
This will include printing heart muscle, blood vessels, valves and electrical tissue.
They say that once the heart is printed, it will need about a week to ‘mature’ before it is given to the recipient.
Dr Williams believes some of the parts will need to be assembled after they have been printed, including some of the blood vessels and the valves – he says the technology does not have the capacity to create a ready-assembled heart.
Dr Williams told the website: ‘Final construction will be achieved by bioprinting and strategic placement of the valves and big vessels.’
He explained that the recipient would have to have surgery to remove tissue, probably fat, from which regenerative cells could be singled out.
These cells would then be combined with a solution that can be put in the printer to allow it to print the heart.
The team believe that the recipient’s body will be unlikely to reject the transplanted organ as it will be made from their own cells.
In the past, scientists who have created 3D printed organs – such as part of a liver – have struggled to keep them alive.
Dr Williams hopes to avoid this problem with the 3D printed heart by encouraging the recipient’s cells to knit together naturally with the printed vessels.
He says the 3D printed blood vessels should be able to connect with the patient’s vessels allowing the blood to flow through the heart and keeping it alive.

Entire article at: http://www.sundaytimes.lk/131124/sun...ims-74260.html

[papabur]

I as well find this to be welcoming news and I wish these articles got more attention because they show the positive side of what 3D printers have to offer us. It is unfortunate that 3D printed weapons is all most people ever hear or even want to talk about. THIS is what should really matter...saving lives! Thanks for the post Eddie.

[BakerEvan]

With heart disease running in my family, I'm glad to see something like this coming in the future. Perhaps we can entirely repair broken heart and arteries soon.

[DrLuigi]

Well i am kinda skepitcal on views on the future by scientists or anyone,

But ye, would solve alot of organ problems as they are now, and i did see a few documantarys that show this would be possible soon.

But still, example in 1970 they said that we would have in the year 2000 all sort of goodies like flying cars and such, did this all happen, of course not.
We did get at the other hand a 3D printer of course, They might have predicted that right if they did. ^^