Bioprinters: Printing a bit of me

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Printing a bit of me

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Bioprinters

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IN A state-of-the-art clean room, a scientist clad in a full-body containment suit, a hair net and blue gloves is preparing some printing cartridges—filled not with ink but a viscous milky liquid. Next to her sits a computer connected to a machine that resembles a large ice-cream dispenser, except that each of its two nozzles is made of a syringe with a long needle. Once the scientist clicks on the “run program” button, the needles extrude not a vanilla or chocolate-flavoured treat, but a paste of living cells. These bioinks are deposited in precise layers on top of each other and interspersed with a gel that forms a temporary mould around the cells.

Forty minutes later, the task is finished. Depending on the choice of bioink and printing pattern, the result could have been any number of three-dimensional biological structures. In this case, it is a strand of living lung tissue about 4cm in length and containing about 50m ...