December 10, 2013

In my blog: Additive Manufacturing – A new tool in the toolbox, part 5, I discussed several bio-3-D Printing projects, like skin, and I mentioned Organovo. It is a California company that was pioneering the 3-D Printing of organ tissue, with an eye toward actually printing organs on demand. They have had excellent results of late, actually printing functional liver tissue. The liver tissue, created using actual cells from donated human livers, is created by printing each type of liver cell, as well as vascular cells in a hex pattern, and providing nutrients so that the cells “grow” as they would in a human liver, to form the liver tissue structure, as well as replicate the liver functions.