In Gabor Forgacs’ lab at the University of Missouri-Columbia, a possible solution is in the works for the thousands of people waiting to receive an organ transplant. This physicist has developed a technology inspired by ink jet printers to create tissues using biotin , that is, spheres made up of between 10,000 and 40,000 cells suspended in nutritive liquid . The biotint goes to an organic paper where, as Forgacs has been able to verify, the cells fuse to form a continuous structure. “Through the bioprinting process we have been able to build, for the first time, tissue structures that work “, says the researcher.
As Forgacs explains in the latest issue of the Tissue Engineering magazine, when the tissue structure begins to take shape, the cells organize themselves automatically. For example, if biotin with three types of cells – endothelial, muscle and fibroblasts – is used to make the wall of an artery, they migrate to form differentiated and consecutive layers. “The study shows that we can use multiple cell types and that we don’t have to do anything to control how they fuse,” the author emphasizes. ” Nature is smart enough to do the job herself.”
University of Missouri-Columbia (www.missouri.edu)
