The Future of Organ Donation: Bioprinting
- Julia R
- Apr 12
- 3 min read
Bioprinting, the process of 3D printing human organs, is a technology that has been around since the late 20th century. In 1989, Robert J. Klebe used a modified HP inkjet printer to print cells, becoming the first person to demonstrate bioprinting. Ten years later, the first bioprinted organ, a bladder, was successfully created and transplanted. Although it’s been 25 years since the first bioprinted organ was put to use in a human body, there is still much research that needs to be done for bioprinting to reach its full potential.
The process of bioprinting an organ is essentially the same as 3D printing any structure. A 3D model is created of the organ and then sent to a specialized printer that extrudes bioink, a liquid or gel made of living cells suspended in a biomaterial, in layers, slowly building the structure. This technology has the potential to impact the entire world of organ
transplantation. The two biggest obstacles in organ transplantation are the availability of organs and finding matches that the recipient won't reject. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, on average, living organ donors provide 6,000 organs a year and deceased donors provide 28,000 organs a year. While these numbers sound significant, it becomes clear why bioprinting is necessary when they are compared to the
103,223 people on the national transplant waiting list. Additionally, bioprinting circumvents the biggest issue of organ transplants: rejection.
Rejection is typically caused by the donated organ’s antigens not matching the antigens of the recipient's immune system. With bioprinting, organs can be custom-made to fit the anatomy of a patient using cells from their own body, reducing risk. Bioprinting is technically commercially available, but only if you have $5,000 to $500,000 to spare. This high cost comes from the expensive technology and the complexity of keeping cells alive during printing. Making this technology more accessible is a big focus of current research because until then, bioprinting can’t reach its full potential.
Dr. Anthony Atala is one of the biggest names in bioprinting. He led the team that created and transplanted the first lab-grown organ back in 1999. It was created by hand, a labor-intensive process he knew would never meet the demand for new organs. In 2004, he agreed to head a team at Wake Forest University working to automate this process, aka create a 3D bioprinter. It turns out that printing living tissue has a lot of challenges, including figuring out how to supply blood and nutrients to a growing organ. After 12 years of research and development, Atala and his team created the Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System, or ITOP. The ITOP used a printed system of “microchannels” to supply nutrients to the tissue, solving the issues of earlier models. Trials in rodents proved incredibly successful, and the technology has developed the ability to print complex organs in recent years.
As of right now, most of the research into this topic has been concerned with developing the process of actually printing the organs. As time goes on and more research is done, it will be interesting to see how bioprinted organs differ from traditionally donated organs. Will immunosuppressants still be needed? Will bioprinted organs be as durable as donated organs? Will they be more durable? Only time will tell, and I, for one, am incredibly excited to see where this technology takes us.
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