Amazing new heart technology

JohnW63

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Printing the heart is wild, but they didn't say how they would make it come to life. How do you make muscle tissue that beats ?
 

fronobulax

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Printing the heart is wild, but they didn't say how they would make it come to life. How do you make muscle tissue that beats ?

Good question. The article seems to suggest that the heart will beat when furnished with electrical signals and a blood supply so perhaps the cellular material used for "printing" is already alive in some sense of the world?
 

adorshki

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Good question. The article seems to suggest that the heart will beat when furnished with electrical signals and a blood supply so perhaps the cellular material used for "printing" is already alive in some sense of the world?

It's not yet truly ready for prime time.
Yes living cells can be kept alive in a bio-matrix for a period of time but will still require some sore of capillary structure to integrate into the recipient and stay alive after transplant, as well as neurologic hookups for the beat inputs.
The real near-term application will probably be tissue patching of damaged heart tissue.
The real immediate usefulness is a proven method of generating tissue that the recipient won't reject.
"More better" explanation here:
https://www.israel21c.org/israelis-print-worlds-first-3d-heart-with-blood-vessels/
 

DThomasC

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The scientists 3D printed a heart, but it seems that the potential is there to make virtually any 'replacement part' desired. As Al pointed out, the tissue comes from the patient so it shouldn't be rejected. Note that all of this is possible only because they are able to reprogram fat cells to be stem cells, which could then become heart tissue, or presumably any other organ or body part.

I've been waiting for scientists to use stem cells to "grow" replacement tissue. It hadn't occurred to me that they would 3D print a complete organ.
 
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