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submitted 10 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/science@lemmy.world
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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

I wish there were a bigger investment in 3D printing organs. They won't have these issues.

[-] PhineaZ@feddit.de 35 points 10 months ago

It's not really an investment thing from my POV. Sure, throwing money at it will speed up research a bit, but there are a huge number of challenges that need to be overcome first, the biggest of these would probably be tissue perfusion - cells tend to die due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. Way too many issues with printing right now. Xenografts are a safer and quicker bet right now because you need to consider immunogenics anyway - if you can't make pig hearts work, you likely won't get patient-specific implants to work either. It's not quite as easy as just 3D-Printing patient stem cells.

[-] baggins@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago
[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

It does appear to be a real thing see here

Not sure how far along this kind of technology is though.

[-] scarabic@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

It appears to be in the early stages of research, tackling the square one problems of how to assemble macrostructures from living cells without damaging them, while keeping them alive, while keeping the whole thing sterile. I would say this is a concept. It has zero demonstrated practical success and is still a decade minimum away from being able to attempt to get it.

Still I think it’s an inevitable technology that we should invest in. Once we can control the development of cells through genetic manipulation, and assemble them into macrostructures, we’ll be able to do quite a lot, and there seem to be advancements on the former frontier all the time. We just don’t know how to get all those stem cells we convinced to become liver tissue together into a liver.

this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
159 points (97.0% liked)

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