"...it's the first heart to be printed with blood vessels, ventricles and chambers, using an ink made from the patient’s own biological materials."
In Tel Aviv, this rabbit-sized heart took about 3 hours to print. In one month, once the cells have matured, the heart will beat and contract! The breakthrough is important not only in its potential to replace diseased areas of the heart with printed "patches". But, it also makes way for patients to order personalized organs. Thus eliminating the body's natural response in rejecting a foreign object after transplant. Wow!
“People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels.” "The use of 'native' patient-specific materials is crucial to successfully engineering tissues and organs."
"Researchers took fatty tissue from a patient, then separated it into cellular and non-cellular components. The cells were then 'reprogrammed' to become stem cells, which turned into heart cells." "First, patient-specific cardiac patches were created followed by the entire heart.""Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely"
