About This Project

The cost of obtaining human organs for either transplant or research is a barrier in both healthcare and academia. Using off the shelf components along with common non-toxic materials used to grow in vitro blood vessels and potentially organs can significantly reduce that barrier.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

To investigate the efficiency of the methods of printing carbohydrate glass for use as a sacrificial tissue structure, and replicate previous studies on printing vascularity. This research will also attempt to address whether or not the human engineered vascularities are sufficient to prevent necrosis in the resulting organ. If the funding is exceeded we may be able to add the study of drug delivery to cancer cell as we have acess to cancer lines in our lab.

What is the significance of this project?

This research is extremely important due to both the overwhelming costs and inefficiency associated with organ transplants and recipient wait lists respectively.Over the past two decades, the gap between the number of patients waiting for a transplant and the number receiving a transplant has continued to widen. The substantial difference between the number of donors and the number of patients waiting for a transplant is one factor that contributes to waiting time from listing to transplant. If the current methodologies employed in tissue engineering could be refined, commercialized, and simplified, patients in need of a new organ could have it without the monumental cost and long wait typically associated with current solutions. This would ideally lead to people visiting the hospital less frequently which would hopefully lead to less HAI's (healthcare acquired infections) and less strain on the medical infrastructure. The technologies that make this possible such as 3-D printing and especially sugar printing have only just become cost effective and viable for use in these applications. Previously rapid prototyping using 3-D printers was too cost prohibitive for a small team without much funding to utilize. The technology behind sugar printing has only recently been developed in the last two years by an open-source group using 3-D printers. The team behind this effort has experience ranging from CAD design to Biology, Biochem, Chem Engineering, and Mech Engineering. We have all put in significant time in both Bio and Chem Labs and are familiar with protocols if handling human cell lines.

What are the goals of the project?

The funds will allow us to improve our custom 3D printer and give us increased print quality. The funds will also be used as a stipend to keep our team of multiple full time undergrads in the lab as much as possible. We sill also use funds to commission the 3D model to be created by a fellow student. This model will be made freely available on Thingiverse to help give back to the open source community that made this possible.