NASA is closer to printing artificial organs in space

In America, at least 17 people a day waiting for an organ transplant. But instead of waiting for a donor to die, would we ever grow our own organs?

Last week, six years later NASA announced the Vascular Tissue Challenge. a competition designed to accelerate research that could ever cause artificial organs, the agency named two winning teams. The challenge was that the teams had to create thick, vascular tissues of human organs in order to last 30 days.

Two teams, both named Winston and WFIRM Wake Forest Institute Regenerative Medicine, Used different 3D printing techniques to create liver tissue grown in the laboratory to meet all of NASA’s requirements and maintain their function.

“We took two different approaches, because when you look at tissues and vascularity, you see that the body does two main things,” he says. Anthony Atala, Head of the WFIRM team and director of the institute.

The two approaches are different in how to achieve vascularization — how blood vessels form in the body. One used tubular structures and the other used spongy tissues to help supply nutrients to cells and remove debris. According to the section, the challenge was distinctive for bioengineering because of the large number of functions that the liver, one of the largest internal organs in the body, performs.

“When the competition came out six years ago, we knew we were trying to solve this problem on our own,” says Section.

Along with advancing in the field of regenerative medicine and facilitating the creation of artificial organs for humans in need of transplants, the project could one day help astronauts on deep space missions in the future.

The concept of tissue engineering has been around for more than 20 years, he says Laura Niklason, A professor of anesthesia and biomedical engineering at Yeste, but with a growing interest in space-based experimentation is transforming the field. “Especially as the world explores private and commercial space travel, the biological effects of low gravity will become increasingly important, and it’s a great tool to help understand that.”

The winning team has yet to overcome one of the biggest barriers to tissue engineering: “It’s very difficult for things to survive and maintain function in the long run,” he says. Andrea O’Connor, Head of biomedical engineering at the University of Melbourne, calls this project ambitious and others like it.

With a $ 300,000 cash prize, Winston will soon have the opportunity to send his research to the International Space Station, where he has already conducted research on similar bodies.

In 2019, Astronaut Christina Koch Activates BioFabrication Facility (BFF) Founded by Greenville, Indiana Aerospace Research Company Techshot for microgravity printing of organic fabrics.