New 3D Bioprinter Could Build Replicas of Human Organs, Offering a Boost for Drug Discovery

Scientists have been fantasizing about the potential of precise 3D bioprinting for years. Just imagine, for example, if doctors could trial therapies on an exact replica of a kidney disease patient’s kidney until they found the perfect solution for that individual—it would have huge implications for the medical field, especially in drug testing. But modern technology has yet to achieve this.

Now, however, biomedical engineers in Australia have invented an innovative high-speed bioprinter that brings us one step closer to that ability, and it uses surprising elements: sound, light and bubbles. Their work was presented in a study published in the journal Nature late last month.

Currently, scientists have only limited ways to create tissue for testing pharmaceutical therapies, such as using lab-grown samples or by relying on traditional 3D bioprinting, per Popular Science’s Andrew Paul. However, cultivating organs in a lab is complex and expensive—and printing them is currently slow and prone to errors, such as positioning cells incorrectly.

“Incorrect cell positioning is a big reason most 3D bioprinters fail to produce structures that accurately represent human tissue,” David Collins, head of the Collins BioMicrosystems Laboratory at the University of Melbourne and a co-author of the study, says in a statement.

“But with our new approach,” Collins and two other researchers write in an article for Pursuit, “not only can we position cells with precision, we can also fabricate at a scale of single cells.”

So, how does it work? The new printer projects light onto a resin bubble to harden it into the desired shape, while a speaker emits sound waves that make the bubble vibrate. These waves help position the individual cells and dramatically speed up the process. In fact, this innovative printing is 350 times faster than traditional methods, per the statement.

“What we’re doing is we are shining light in a 2D pattern across—and this is kind of what is the distinguishing feature for this technology—we are printing across a bubble,” Collins explains to ABC Melbourne’s Raf Epstein. “We’re continuously changing those projections that are curing the individual layers as we go through that,” he adds. “The fundamental principle is that we can shine light onto a material, and we can create a solid.”

Really excited to have helped developed the new 3D printing technology - Dynamic Interface Printing - recently published in @Nature

This powerful new biofabrication tool overcomes many 3D printing limitations by using an air-liquid interfacehttps://t.co/8APHaLd3sw

— Dr Daniel Heath, recruiting PhD students (@DrDanielHeath) November 5, 2024

Because the tissue floats in resin as it is printed, the bioprinter can also create “really delicate structures using really soft materials, softer than anything currently being used,” Collins tells New Scientist’s James Woodford. Being able to accurately reproduce the consistency of human tissue is fundamental. He adds that they can even print analogs of different parts of the body, such as bone, tendons and skin.

Additionally, the floating tissue doesn’t need to be printed onto a solid platform, in contrast to traditional methods. Instead, it can be printed directly into a Petri dish, vial or lab plate. This increases the cells’ survival rate by avoiding the need to physically handle the material, which in traditional bioprinters sometimes contaminates and harms the cells.

For now, the team has only printed tiny samples with a diameter of 3 centimeters, a length of 7 centimeters and a resolution of 15 micrometers, per New Scientist. And the team writes in Pursuit that completely 3D-printing organs is “still a bit futuristic.”

But they have a bold vision for that future. This technology, researchers say, could be used to replicate human organs and tissues for more targeted and ethical drug trials, since it would eliminate the need for animal testing. Next, the team plans to work with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne to further their research.

“This means that the current ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to disease treatment could soon become obsolete,” they write in Pursuit. The new printing innovation can “help pave the way for more effective, patient-specific therapies in the fight against cancer and other diseases.”

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.