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In what the Israeli media calls a "world first", scientists from the Tel Aviv University have printed in 3D a small heart using human tissue, including vessels, collagen and biological molecules – a breakthrough , according to Haaretz, that they hope someday will make the organ donation obsolete.
Technology is still a long way out of human transplants, however – the printed heart of the team, the size of a rodent, is not quite there yet.
"The cells must be pumping capacity, they can actually contract, but we need them to work together," senior scientist Tal Dvir told Haaretz.
"It's the first time anyone has designed and successfully printed a complete heart with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers," Dvir said.
To print the heart, scientists have created a "custom hydrogel" to form "bio-links", according to an article published today in the journal Advanced Science.
The hydrogel was derived from adipose tissue extracted from human subjects.
This is not the first time that 3D printing technology is used to print organs. For example, a team of researchers at ETH Zurich created an artificial heart printed in 3D in 2017, but instead of using human tissue, these researchers used a flexible material.
Cover image: f, g) A heart printed in a bath of support. h) After extraction, the left and right ventricles were injected with red and blue dyes, respectively, to reveal the hollow cavities and the septum separating them. (Noor et al., Advanced Science, 2019).
This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.
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