Medical science could change forever thanks to a “special” inkjet-printer as a Japanese professor says that his machine could generate human organs. Makoto Nakamura from the Toyama University, Japan claims that the technology is very simple and it works just like a conventional inkjet printer, but instead of jetting out ink droplets, the machine will jet out hundreds, maybe thousands of cells per second.
The professor from Toyama city is not sure that the inkjet printer-like machine can produce human organs, but it’s worth trying as the preliminary tests were encouraging.
“It would be like building a huge skyscraper on a micro level using different kinds of cells and other materials instead of steel beams, concrete and glass,” said Nakamura. “Ultimately I hope to make a heart.”
Nakamura is aware that developing a heart could take him about 20 years, but he is also very confident that this technology could lead to producing good hearts for people in need of heart transplants. The advantage of this inkjet-like technique is that the heart will be produced with cells coming from the patient therefore the body will not reject it.
The organ printing technique should be world’s finest printed 3D structure, as Nakamura likes to say. The technology is also compared to slicing a fruit as the organ will be cut horizontally and the researchers will observe the pattern of the cells.
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Thanks to RM
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