NetRyder
Tech Junkie
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2002
- Messages
- 13,256
How crazy is that?If you think injecting ink into a printer cartridge might damage your printer, try filling it with animal cells.
That's what they're doing at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, these days. In the name of science, researchers have developed a way to print sheets of solid animal tissue by filling Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet cartridges with animal cells, or "bio-ink."
Using basic design software, often AutoCAD, scientists like Thomas Boland, an assistant professor of bioengineering, are designing and generating tissue that could someday save heart patients who need new cardiac tissue.
"We've created cardiac tissue successfully," Boland says. "It actually beats in the petri dish."
Boland says that just as blending primary colors results in new colors, so does printing different cells create new tissue.
Read more about it here.