3D Printing Human Replacement Organs

It is indeed really fascinating at how far we've gone with 3D printing in just a few years.  3D printing started off experimentally and then moved into some specific industrial applications as early as the 1980's but it only became a commercial product, albeit expensive, around the year 2009.  (History of 3D printing).

Since then, 3D printing has become well known in every household.  Though most houses don't have one such device, most houses now have some gadget, widget or device that was either partially or fully built using 3D printing technology.  Not to mention that you can buy your very own 3D printer on the Internet and in home improvement stores too for less than $300 if you shop around.

Because 3D printing technology has advanced enough to deal with multiple materials nowadays as well as being able to scale up (3D printed houses), and down.  Historically, they were used to prototype small things but now we are able to 3D print very complex tiny structures.  Now we are working at all sizes.  There are still a number of issues we're working out, primarily being the techniques for 3D printing don't provide much refinement in the finished material, hence why the technique is still mostly used for prototyping or rough work that we know will require some finish in the end anyway.  Engineers are working on it.

What is amazing is in the last couple years, 3D printers were designed to 3D print tissues, both animal and human.  The exciting aspect of this, is in medical research where usually the research is done on animals first, before a medicine or surgery technique is used on humans.  It is a long process and even though some animals have tissue and body structures similar to humans, their body chemistry is different and it often means that a new drug successful at treating a problem in an animal, won't work or work as well when the human trials come up.

As far as I know, we've managed to use 3D printers to make human organs.  The first interesting one is our current ability to 3D print human skin.  This is exciting because burn victims often need compatible skin for grafting.  With a 3D printer, specialists can now use the patient's cells to make grafts (along with a stock of compatible skin).  Also, with this technology, we can easily experiment on human skin bypassing much of the work that is required on animals in the path of drug development.

I go more in depth on this in the video below, in particular talking about future applications:

Now skin is one thing, but printing more complex organs is still a challenge.  Well, turns out that a lab at Northwestern University of Chicago has been able to 3D print functioning mouse ovaries that later were capable to produce mouse pups.  Humans would logically be the next step.  Can you imagine women losing their ovaries due to some disease or accident and being able to get new ovaries 3D printed and then implanted in to them, making them fertile again?

Of course, other labs are using similar cellular techniques, mainly using human pluripotent cells, to successfully generate other functioning organs, like human colon and human livers, both of which are extremely complicated organs.  Of course, they are not able to currently grow them to full human size, but they seem to be able to do the job they are supposed to do.  The issue of size is still being worked on as larger organs need a network of blood vessels to feed and oxygenate cells near the middle of the organs, and it is extremely difficult right now to do so as the organ grows.  Perhaps when we are able to 3D print these quickly, it'll be feasible.

Give it a few years and we may hear about those organs being printed fully ready for implantation and full size, using the patient's own cells (thus avoiding issues with immune response and rejection.

All in all, we're constantly working out ways to being able to properly replace failing body parts using the patient's own cell stock, which should be super exciting for anyone with serious organic ailments, missing organs, or requiring transplants in the next few years.

It won't be long after when we'll be able to 3D print fully formed human bodies with refined organic tissue 3D printing technologies....

Can I have my 20 year old body back?  (assuming one could transfer my knowledge, experience and everything that makes me ME, into the brand new body....).    Something to start getting used to...