Wicked
- Science
The Latest Man-Made Organs
Almost 100,000 people languish on organ-transplant waiting lists. But new tissue-fabrication techniques should make swapping in a man-made liver as easy as snapping Lego bricks into place. Blood vessels Method: 3-D printer When: 5 years Gabor Forgacs, a tissue engineer at the University of Missouri, is making blood-vessel networks by culturing three types of vessel cells and loading them into a fridge-size bioprinter. This machine prints out the cells to build capillaries in preprogrammed patterns.
9.19.2008 at 05:21pm - Comment by WickedI agree collaboration is the way to go. All three examples sound like they could be used together to make a more complex lab organ, say a heart or lung. Frame it up, print it out, and grow it up. I think with progress on the stem cell front, along with progress in epigenetics and and chemical culturing we are on our way to not only lab organs but robust usable ones.
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December 2009: Best of What's New
In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
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