Technology is advanced in a manner where it has solutions for almost all the problems we face. Many people in the world have lost their body organs for different reasons and are suffering from the same. Have you heard about 3D printing technology? It is the process of creating or manufacturing a physical object with the help of a liquid or plastic material from a digital design. It has applications in many fields like prosthetics, construction, implants, jewels, aerospace, healthcare, etc. In this article, we will discuss one of the most useful applications of 3D printing in the medical industry which is used in various sectors i.e., Bio-Printing.
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What is Bio-Printing?
Bio-printing is the collaboration of biology and 3D printing technology which involves the layer-by-layer arrangements of the biological materials that then form living tissues and organs. The bio-ink is a liquid that contains the cells or biomaterial filaments that are used in printing artificial organs and tissues in the laboratory. The purpose of using bio-printing is to build the body part or the organ that replicates the original organs in our body.
The first organ to be bio-printed was the human bladder in the year 1999, it was also successfully transplanted into a human and it was built using the cells of the recipient. From then to now many body parts like lungs, hearts, skin, bones, eyes, blood vessels, living tissues, etc are been printed using bioprinting. It is also been used in the research of cancer whereby growing the cancer cells or tumors is done in a test tube to study and can also be an effective way to experiment the treatments on tumor cells.
Working of bioprinting
The application of 3D printing has a lot of freedom which helps in researching the various scenarios related to new and deadly diseases. The application of bioprinting is vast where there is no such particular process for culturing the cells to explain, but here we will learn the steps or stages that indicate the workflow of bioprinting.
- Pre-printing: In this stage, the digital form of the organ or the part is created for the printers to read. If it is simple then software like DNA Studio will have the ability to print directly in 3D geometry whereas others will need external software like CAD etc. The step also involves the preparation of the composition of biomaterial ink through cells as the researchers require the same cells to study.
- Bioprinting: in this stage of the bioprinting process the researchers will fill the bio-inks in multiple threads of the printer and provide the digital copy to print the object in the given shape. In the light-based bioprinting process, the vat of photo-ink is filled as the bio-ink to the printer. In printing the different cells or tissues the researcher needs to culture the cell of desired biological composition and then can use it as bio-ink.
- Post-printing: After the formation of the object in the desired shape it needs to be cross-linked to make it a stable one. This can be achieved by treating the objects with UV light or the iconic solutions. Later it is kept in the cell medium of an incubator for the process of cultivation.
Applications of Bio-printing
- Bioprinting can be used in repairing damaged tissue and organs with regenerative medicine alternatives. This application is helpful in the transformation of people’s lives who are suffering from defects, injuries, or diseases.
- It is also helpful in pharmaceutical testing where the drugs can be tested on cultured cells to understand the responses of the drugs. This also reduces the reliability of the animals for testing and analysis.
- It also enables the recreation of complex tissues like tumors for learning the diseases and inventing prevention along with improving the treatment process.
Conclusion
In short, bioprinting can be considered one of the most effective and useful inventions in the medical industry. Bioprinting also has challenges and ethical issues for the culture of cells in the laboratory. As bioprinting has the involvement of advanced machines its cost is also very high which makes it non-affordable for common people. The use of any technology for the betterment of human lives should follow ethics and handle legal responsibilities.