3D printers can be used not only for printing weapons and cranial prostheses, but also for the production of synthetic materials with the properties of living tissue. New artificially grown materials will deliver drugs or replace damaged tissue within the human body.
New 3D printing materials take the form of so-called “droplet structures,” which consist of thousands of connected water droplets coated with a lipid film. Lipids are organic compounds present in the cells and tissues of animals. Lipids accumulate energy and are a structural component of cell membranes. Unlike artificial tissue grown from stem cells, droplet structures do not contain genetic materials and do not have the ability to replicate (double). This is their main advantage.
We are not trying to create materials that are very much like living tissue, but rather structures that could fulfill its functions. We have demonstrated the possibility of creating structures from tens of thousands of connected drops. Drops can be printed together with protein pores, channels that permeate the lattice system and can transmit electrical signals from one part of the network to the other, as nerves do, ”said study leader Hagan Bailey, professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford.
A drop with a diameter of 50 microns exceeds the size of a living cell by five times. However, researchers do not consider this a problem and promise to reduce the size of the drop. The droplet structure remains stable for several weeks.
The structure we created contains about 35,000 drops. But this is far from the limit. It all depends on money and time. During the experiment, we used two types of drops. There is no reason not to use other different types. There may be more than fifty, ”says the professor.
According to one of the study participants, ordinary consumer 3D-printers can not do such printing. To print artificial fabric you need to have a special device. Moreover, the unique “drip printer” is capable of making drip structures, which after printing can independently take various forms.
We have created a dimensionally variable method for the production of a new type of soft material. A printed structure can repeat the behavior of a living cell and tissue, says study co-author Gabriel Villar.
Research work on the creation of an analogue of living tissue was published in the scientific journal Science.
The article is based on materials .
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