Skip to Content

Printing Tissues

Tissue engineers have tried a number of schemes for building replacement organs out of patients’ own cells, but biophysi-cist Gabor Forgacs at the University of Missouri-Columbia has a new twist: let the cells assemble themselves. Forgacs and his team start with a printing device built by Sciperio, an R&D firm in Stillwater, OK, loaded with what he calls “bioink.” The bioink consists of spherical aggregates of many thousands of cells. The printer deposits the aggregates onto successive layers of biodegradable gel; by manipulating the composition of the gel, Forgacs can coax the aggregates to grow together to form complex structures while the gel degrades. Forgacs has already built three-dimensional blood-vessel-like modules and thinks a usable blood vessel will be ready in the near future. Another application Forgacs envisions is in cancer treatment. Doctors could take tumor cells from a patient, build an artificial replica of the tumor outside of his or her body, and see which drugs worked best on the replica before barraging the patient with different treatments.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build

“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”

Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives

The workplace tool’s appeal extends far beyond organizing work projects. Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.

Learning to code isn’t enough

Historically, learn-to-code efforts have provided opportunities for the few, but new efforts are aiming to be inclusive.

Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google

Hinton will be speaking at EmTech Digital on Wednesday.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.