With the acceleration of the pace of life and the increase of work pressure, cardiovascular disease is increasing in young people. Every year, as many as one million people die of heart disease. A recent groundbreaking study may improve this phenomenon.

Recently, researchers at the University of Minnesota used a 3D printer in their laboratory to print a normal centimeter sized human heart pump, a beating human heart. This discovery may be of great significance for the study of heart disease, and it also ignites the hope of countless heart disease patients.

In the past, researchers have tried to 3D print cardiac muscle cells derived from pluripotent human stem cells, which have the potential to develop into any type of cell in the body. The researchers reprogrammed the stem cells into cardiomyocytes and then used a special 3D printer to print on the three-dimensional structure of the extracellular matrix. At that time, scientists were unable to reach the critical cell density needed to make cardiac cells work properly. Now, the problem has been solved.

For patients with heart disease, it may bring more hope than that. Cell filled biomaterials produced by pluripotent stem cells give 3D printing of more chambers, ventricles and aorta copies with higher cell wall thickness than before. Organs reproduced by this process can provide clinical tests for various new drugs and provide models for genetic diseases reference resources.

In general, before a drug is marketed, a drug must undergo a complex and long-term process of testing and screening, which includes testing human tissue cultures in Petri dishes, and is usually approved for clinical trials in humans after testing animals.

The technology transfer company of Tel Aviv University (tau) has signed a cooperation agreement with Bayer pharmaceutical company to test new drugs on 3D printed heart tissue, which greatly shortens the time to market of new drugs, and saves a lot of expenses for testing, so that patients can use new drugs earlier and cheaper.

At present, 3D printing is more and more widely used in the medical field, from dental pattern printing to prosthesis printing, from 3D printing artery to 3D printing heart. Although we know that it is still a long way to achieve real organ printing, more and more practice makes us firmly believe that the arrival of 3D printing organ will definitely bring changes to the medical field and bring hope to patients.

Sources from: https://creality3dpro.store/blogs/news