By Ksenia Kurenysheva
The 3D printer, a popular technological advancement that was previously thought to only aid mechanic and business industries, is now progressing into the medicinal and biological fields.
A new process of 3D printing called 3D bioprinting, is a complex procedure that can now aid many scientists, surgeons and doctors within the realm of tissue-engineering, which is a fancy way of saying the restoring, maintaining, creation and sustaining of tissue.
So, now the question becomes: how is this possible? Well, the process of bioprinting involves bioinks, which are made out of natural and synthetic materials mixed with cells, which are then developed through scaffolding-like layers to imitate that of a tissue. Of course, while the time that it takes to bioprint an organ relies on multiple factors, it usually takes an hour to several hours for the printing to be complete.
Now, while it may seem that this technological advancement is, well, simply a technological advancement, its use runs much deeper. One such instance of this is the lack of organ donors willing to donate their organs for transplants, which results in many deaths that could have possibly been prevented.
Thus, bioprinting organs and human tissue will generate increased access to organs for transplants, serving as a positive step towards decreasing the numbers around transplant deaths, the waiting times regarding receiving an organ, and questions about the ethicality of organ donation.
