3D printing technique could create artificial blood vessels

A "deep development" in organic manufacturing could open the doors to printed arteries.

Engineers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have come up with a way to mimic the complex geometry of blood vessels with the help of 3D printing.

This technique could help doctors find new ways to fight vascular diseases such as hypertension, by creating an artificial tissue with arteries and flexible and flexible veins. It uses oxygen to define 3D printed models with different degrees of hardness.

"Oxygen is usually a bad thing because it causes incomplete hardening," said Yonghui Ding, one of the study's authors. "Here we use a layer that allows a fixed rate of permeation of oxygen."

By closely controlling how oxygen was propagated during the printing process, the researchers were able to construct objects with the same geometry, but with different levels of rigidity. The results were published in the journal Nature.

As part of their experiment, the engineers created a small Chinese warrior figure, printed so that the outer layers remain hard while the inside remains soft. Hard on the outside, but with a soft heart.

They also printed three versions of a simple structure: a beam supported by two rods. Depending on the design of the different parts, the structure will be solid or collapsed.

Instead of building rubbish decks or metaphors on warriors, the technique is envisioned as a way to create an artificial tissue – especially vessels or complex organs that may need to be harder to some places and more flexible to others.

"It's a deep development and an encouraging first step in our goal of creating structures that work like a healthy cell should work," Ding said.

The printer can currently process biomaterials up to 10 microns; about one tenth of the width of a human hair. Future iterations, however, will aim to further reduce this number.

"The challenge is to create an even finer scale for chemical reactions," said Xiaobo Yin, lead author of the study. "But we see tremendous opportunities for this technology and the potential for artificial tissue manufacturing."