This is a performance at the frontier of technology and medicine: this week, an American startup, Biolife4D, designed a human heart … entirely printed in 3D.
From the cells of a patient, an extremely sophisticated printer has composed layer by layer a real human heart with its blood vessels, its ventricles … The heart obtained in the end has the same proportions and the same structure as human heart. On the other hand, it only replicates "partially" the functioning of a heart of normal size.
Other tissues and organs to print
A few months ago, a team of Israeli researchers had achieved a similar performance, and the potential is enormous: in the long term, this could make it possible to "repair" a failing heart, or to perform a transplant without risk of rejection …
This innovation is just one example of the promise of bio-printing. It is already possible to print skin to achieve, for example, transplants for burn victims.
In France, the Bloc Print project was thus present last November during the Defense Innovation Forum. Supported by the Army, it could be used to 3D print other tissues than skin, including cartilage or mammary glands.
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https://www.bfmtv.com/tech/aux-etats-unis-un-coeur-humain-imprime-en-3d-1766041.html
