While nearly 45% of American adults are registered to be organ donors, the grim fact is that they have to die in order to provide their organs to others, and there simply aren’t enough deaths of people whose organs are fit for transplant in order to fulfill the need. Neither can the demand be met through living donors who are able to donate a kidney or a lung, or a piece of liver, intestine, or pancreas. Instead, the dream exists in the research community that at some point it won’t be necessary to wait for a tragedy for one person in order to prevent a tragedy for another, through the creation of organs from the ground up.
There have been rumors in the 3D printing community for some time now, whispers of breakthroughs that could lead to the growing or 3D printing of new organs, and, of course, the sci-fi and conspiracy communities have been thinking about this for decades. But actual strides are being made in the field of organ engineering which are bringing the future of organ creation closer to the realm of possibility. A multi-disciplinary team composed of researchers in tissue engineering, 3D biofabrication, biomaterials design, and stem cell differentiation at Harvard’s Wyss Institute are steadily working to build on their success creating a functioning kidney subunit with current work to build the branched vascular networks unique to each organ.
Their efforts focus on the creation of the cells and subunits that can later be used to generate complete organs, so there are no kidneys coming off the printers just yet. The advanced 3D bioprinting capabilities available at the Wyss Institute have already allowed team members such as Dr. Jennifer Lewis’ organs-on-chips to be created, using special polymer inks for the creation of structures made up of human cells, complete with vasculatures and extracellular matrices. These organ-imitating tissues have provided tantalizing insights into what might be in store as researchers continue to work towards the creation of viable human organs. The team has its desired work plan before it:“After having established organ-specific vascular networks, the research team will work to develop additional methods and tools that may integrate other specialized cell types like those present in the connective tissue that provide cohesion and stability to an organ, and the cell types that perform the actual organ-specific functions, like blood filtration in the kidney, metabolism in the liver, or contraction of the heart. During that process, the engineered and induced blood vessels that reach into the depths of the 3D tissue constructs act to support the more complex nascent tissue with its cell-type specific requirements for oxygen and nutrients as well as factors cells need for their differentiation and survival.”
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[Source/Images: Wyss Institute at Harvard University]