Photo: Aileen Constans
This precision extruding deposition (PED) instrument enables researchers to construct resorbable tissue scaffolds.
Two years ago, cell biologist Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, created a buzz in the tissue-engineering world by predicting that in the not-so-distant future, scientists would be able to print whole replacement organs, and eventually whole bodies, using machines similar to desktop printers. Whether this scenario will ever happen is still a matter of debate, but three-dimensional printing technologies are currently creating a mini-revolution in tissue engineering.
One researcher at the forefront of that revolution is Wei Sun of Drexel University in Philadelphia, who is designing rapid prototyping machines that print cells, scaffold materials, and growth factors simultaneously.1 One Thursday last month Saif Khalil, a graduate student in Sun's computer-aided tissue engineering laboratory, placed a Petri dish in the center of a benchtop ventilation hood, pressed a computer key, ...
