Introduction and Purpose
This report presents an overview of Human Organ Printing technology, its purpose, technical and historical information, and the impact of this technology on society. Human Organ Printing is considered as one of the most important and cutting-edge advancement in today’s medical field as this technology made it possible to print human organs directly with the help of bio-life cells. Therefore, using the 3D printing technology in the field of bio-printing to produce the live human cells with great accuracy could address the number of health problems in the sector of healthcare (Mironov et al. 2008). Up to this point the technology of 3D printing is rapidly evolving, and where in early 2000s it was only used to make dental implants and custom prosthetics, it has now been used to produce tissues, ears, exoskeletons, stem cells, vascular networks, jaw bones, cell culture, and blood vessels (Jammalamadaka and Tappa 2018).
While the use of this technology has allowed the scientists to successfully 3D print the certain tissues, bones, and cartilage and more complex organs such as heart, liver, kidney etc. are yet to be printed and transplanted to the body of human patient. Primarily, the purpose of Human Organ Printing is to revolutionize the transplantation procedure and put an end to the organ waiting list as every year thousands of people wait in pain or die waiting for an organ transplant all over the world (Yan et al. 2018). According to the transplant Australia, there are around 1400 people at any one time waiting for a transplant in Australia whereas in 2018, only 554 deceased and 237 living people donated their organs. With these donations Doctors were able to perform 897 kidney transplants, 318 liver transplants, 129 heart transplants, 52 pancreas transplants, 221 lung transplants, one small intestine transplant and other minor procedure. In total 1728 Australian got a new chance of life due to these organ donations (Transplant Australia 2019). Therefore, the successful employment of 3D printing of these organs, would give an equal
chance to everybody who is suffering from major organ issues and would save thousands of people from prolonged suffering and death.
Technical and historical information
Historical Information
3D printing is one of the great innovations of past century and we have yet not seen its full potential. 3D printing technique was developed by Charles Hull in 1980s which is used to create a 3D object by printing the successive layers of material on top of each other using the computer rendered stereo lithography (STL) files as a blueprint. Up to this point in time, 3D printing was generally used in the field of prototyping but recently large scale production of finished goods and semi-finished goods is also started with the use of this technology. Furthermore, the 3D technology is touching constantly new horizons as it is being used from making replacement part of appliances to the custom medical devices such as hearing aids (Horvath 2014).
Seeing the untapped potential of 3D printing technology in many different fields, Medical researcher also started realizing its importance and applicability in the health care sector. However, all of the progression in the medical field really started when the production of cellular construct through the use of 3D printing was introduced by Thomas Boland of Clemson University in 2003. He was the first person to file for the patent to use the inkjet printing for cells. Since his initial findings, the field of bio printing was further developed to encompass the production of organ structure and tissues. Presently, the scientists are trying to produce major human organs whereas some of the printed organs are already approaching the functionality requirements necessary for clinical implementation (Noorani 2017).
Organ printing is relatively a new field and a lot of research is going on to successfully print the major organs to overcome the problem of global shortage of organ donors. Up till now the scientists were successful in printing and implementing it in clinical settings and in relation to flat organs such as blood vessels, vascular and skin or hollow structure organs such as bladder. These artificial organs are generally produced from the cells of the recipients. However, organs with more solid cellular structure such as heart, kidney, pancreas etc. are still undergoing a major research (Gu et al. 2015).
Technical Information
Manufacturing of artificial organs with the help of 3D printing is a very major topic of study in the field of biological engineering. 3D bio printing technology like well-established additive manufacturing technology or 3D printing includes both software (digital model) and hardware (3D bio printer). The 3D bio printer is simply a mechanical dispensing device that places living cells and biomaterials or tissues and spherical bars in a three-dimensional space exactly in accordance with the digital model provided by the software. The software or digital model assists in operational control at the time of robotic organ constructions and bio printing of 3D tissues (Radenkovic, Solouk and Seifalian 2016).
As it has been stated previously that tissues, bones and cartilage have been successfully printed in 3D. But the reason that the same success is not seen in organs development is because there are more complexities in organs than tissues and they require more time and structure to develop properly. As a result, the approach used for 3D printing organs varies from the process that is used to create less complex structures and tissues. Therefore, where typical way of 3D printing is used to print tissues by substituting cells with ink or filaments, the organ printing is done by printing lattice structures upon which the cells of the patient’s body can be placed. These
lattice structures are fundamentally an inflexible framework that offer such a stable environment in which cells can grow and ultimately develop into a whole organ (Ravnic et al. 2017).
Organ printing with the help of 3D printing could be done by using number of techniques. However, the technique that might be chosen for the organ printing depends on the type of organ and specific advantage that it confers. Two most common and prominent types of organ printing techniques are extrusion bioprinting and drop-based bioprinting. There are also many other techniques that can be used for organ printing but either those techniques are still in development stage or they are not commonly used (Murphy and Atala 2014).
Impact of Technology
There is almost a universal agreement on the two properties that are associated with definition of emerging technologies namely novelty and growth (Rotolo, Hicks and Martin 2015). Currently, the research has been conducted to produce artificial organs whereas scientists were able to produce such printed organs that meet the functionality requirement for clinical implementation. Therefore, this technology that is both new and has seen significant growth in last two decades is certainly one of the emerging technologies that would revolutionize the health care industry on its conclusion. The good thing about organ printing technology is that it is not some distant future dream. With the progress that is made in medical field with the use of 3D printing, the scientists are very optimistic that the day is not far when the major organs such as heart, kidney etc. would be available to everybody in society without the dependency on organ donors and with the passage of time they would be available at a much cheaper cost. At a time when replacement of human organ with printed organ is successfully achieved, thousands of people all over the world would be able to benefit from this achievement. Not only the printed
organ would end the suffering of thousands of people all over the world but it would also save the life of thousands of people who die waiting for an organ transplant (Ventola 2014).
Similarly, the healthcare cost is increasing with the prolonged life in general, whereas 3D printing in medicine field is now considered as a leading driver of innovation and cost reduction. This technology is also improving the quality of medicine, and speeding up the surgical procedures and even assisting in producing a cheaper version of surgical tools (Mpofu, Mawere and Mukosera 2014). According to Gartner, the predicted market value of 3D printing in the health care sectors will be around 1.2 billion US dollars by the end of 2020 whereas 35% of implants and prosthetics surgeries will be performed with the help of 3D printing technology by the end of current year. Presently, the most focused area in healthcare sector are customized prosthetics and orthotics due to significant reduction in production cost of such medical devices. Whereas Bioprinting is considered to be the most significant area of this field as it is opening new doors for on-demand creation of human organs i.e. bones, skin and cartilage, and with this technology, it would be possible for doctors to even produce limbs and replacement organs (Daniel 2019). Furthermore, it is also very likely that the drugs efficiency will increase with the manufacturing of 3D printed drugs and personalized medicine whereas 3D printed organs can also put an end to the drug testing on animals (Ventola 2014).
References
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Jammalamadaka, U. and Tappa, K., 2018. Recent advances in biomaterials for 3D printing and tissue engineering. Journal of functional biomaterials, 9(1), p.22.
Mironov, V., Kasyanov, V., Drake, C. and Markwald, R.R., 2008. Organ printing: promises and challenges.
Murphy, S.V. and Atala, A., 2014. 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs. Nature biotechnology, 32(8), p.773.
Mpofu, T.P., Mawere, C. and Mukosera, M., 2014. The impact and application of 3D printing technology.
Noorani, R., 2017. 3D Printing: Technology, Applications, and Selection. CRC Press.
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Ravnic, D.J., Leberfinger, A.N., Koduru, S.V., Hospodiuk, M., Moncal, K.K., Datta, P., Dey, M., Rizk, E. and Ozbolat, I.T., 2017. Transplantation of bioprinted tissues and organs: technical and clinical challenges and future perspectives. Annals of surgery, 266(1), pp.48-58.
Rotolo, D., Hicks, D. and Martin, B.R., 2015. What is an emerging technology?. Research Policy, 44(10), pp.1827-1843.Yan, Q., Dong, H., Su, J., Han, J., Song, B., Wei, Q. and
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Transplant Australia., 2019. The Facts – Transplant Australia. [online] Available at: https://transplant.org.au/the-facts/ [Accessed 28 Aug. 2019].
Ventola, C.L., 2014. Medical applications for 3D printing: current and projected uses. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(10), p.704.
Yan, Q., Dong, H., Su, J., Han, J., Song, B., Wei, Q. and Shi, Y., 2018. A review of 3D printing technology for medical applications. Engineering, 4(5), pp.729-742.