Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
7
Bioprinting
in “living ink”
Anthony Atala, a researcher at Wake Forest University, caused a sensation
when he appeared in a TED talk in 2011 and gave what many people mis-
took for a demonstration of how to print a living human kidney. Naturally, since
90 percent of the patients on the organ donation list are waiting for replacement
kidneys, people got very excited. After the ensuing confusion was sorted out,
it turned out that 3D printing live kidneys was still in the early research phase.
The “kidney printing” was actually a lab experiment involving the 3D printing
of kidney-like tissue that was capable of filtering blood and diluting urine.
Atala's TED demonstration had the effect of raising peoples' awareness of the
possibilities inherent in 3D printing body parts. Atala, long an evangelist of regen-
erative medicine and one of the pioneering researchers of bioprinting, remains
optimistic. In an interview with a newsletter from a major inancial irm, Atala
said that “there is no question that someday, perhaps in the span of a generation,
you can have a heart made out of your own cell tissue. Isn't that amazing?”
1
The printer of youth
William Shakespeare called old age a “hideous winter.” Many cultures tell
stories of a mythical Fountain of Youth which gives people the gift of eternal
youth. A medieval novel described the Fountain's therapeutic power to turn
old warriors into young ones.
The old warriors; more than forty-six bathed in it and when they
came out they were age thirty and like the best knights. Then the
other old men . . . said see how old and bent we are? We have lived
more than a hundred years and now you will see us in another guise.
