X-Message-Number: 24537 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: Good news for neuros? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:44:30 -0700 Presumably one could "print" a functional human body from the neck down using an advanced form of this technology [Mark Plus]: http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2724491 Press print for body parts Jun 10th 2004 From The Economist print edition Rapid prototyping: Advances in three-dimensional printing are opening up a number of new medical applications for the technology . . . researchers at Advanced Ceramics Research in Tucson, Arizona, are developing rapid prototyping to create replacement bones, with funding from America's Office of Naval Research. The idea is that a patient with a shattered arm, for example, would have a section of replacement polymer bone made using data from CT and MRI scans. The artificial bone, porous and coated with a thin layer of calcium phosphate, is implanted into the arm in place of the damaged bone. Within a few weeks, the remaining real bone attaches itself to the implant and grows through the porous scaffold, encasing the implant in living bone within 18 months. The technique has already been successfully demonstrated in rats. The next step will be to apply the technology to printing body organs, which would be built up by arranging individual cells, one layer at a time. According to Gregory Gratson, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the printing process is quite benign, so living cells grown in culture should be able to survive it. Printing artificial organs could then make up for the lack of donor organs. It will, however, require printers capable of producing far finer details than are currently possible, in order to recreate the tiny cellular structures in livers and kidneys. But progress in the field is rapid. Results published earlier this year by Dr Gratson and his colleague Jennifer Lewis show that they have refined the 3D printing process to produce structures just 0.5 microns (millionths of a metre) across. This is a hundred times smaller than previously possible, and small enough to allow research into organ-printing to begin in earnest. _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24537