3D Printers May Hold Key to Solving Organ Donor Problems

The process of organ donations is fraught with peril. Sometimes people needing organs to live are not able to get them in time and in some extreme cases, organ recipients get infected from a “deadly” donor as in the case of one person this past July who received a kidney from a donor who had contracted rabies from raccoon bites.

Currently, there does not exist the ability to “bioprint” human organs which would entail a highly advanced printer that can create a copy of an organ from the same recipient’s own organ tissue. However, human tissues can be grown in a controlled laboratory environment to create bladders, skin, and tracheas. The process is done skillfully by hand. The fact that the process can be done by hand opens up the possibility that it can be automated using what are termed 3D printers. Note these aren’t the types of printers anyone can pick up at a retail store or online.

Doctor’s hope that if an application for 3D printers can be found with building tissue, eventually the printers can be used to build organs such as kidneys, hearts, and livers. Such a breakthrough would greatly reduce the risk of both organ rejection & contamination.

Source material:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/3d-printed-organs_n_3983971.html