Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
It seems that there has been a lot of technical innovations in biology that promise to propel the dental field further in terms of what can be accomplished for patients. From re-growing teeth, to turning wood into bone, the future looks amazing.
To this list of miracles, now add printable human tissue. Bjorn Carey at Live Science reported on some scientists at the University of Manchester who have figured out a way to artificially manufacture skin. Here’s how its done:
Scientists expect to eventually build commercial skin printers for hospital use. Doctors would take cells from a patient's body, multiply them, and suspend them in a nutrient-rich liquid similar to ink. A technician would enter measurements of a patient's wound into a computer and feed the suspended cells into the printer.
The cells would then be seeded on a plastic tissue scaffold, which provides shape and stability to the new piece of skin as it develops. The scaffold would also anchor the perfectly shaped piece of skin over the wound, once applied, keeping the graft in place until it takes hold.
The immediate benefit would be burn or accident victims who would have lost the ability to regenerate keratinized tissue. By dropping these printers right into the hospital setting, they would be able to immediately address the patients needs on an emergency basis. Next in line would be procedures less dependant on time. Oral cancer victims would be able to regrow intraoral and extraoral skin rather than having to wear a prosthetic. And with one of the barriers to dental implant treatment being the presence of adequate soft tissue, the surgeon would no longer need to jump into another donor site (i.e. your palate) to harvest the necessary cells.
They even think that this printer could eventually replace whole organs by laying down the correct order of cells on a premade scaffold, using up to eight different inks. I’m sure they will follow HP’s example by practically giving away the printer, but charging you an arm and a leg for the ink cartridge (no pun intended).