Tissue Engineer Prints Replacement Kidney Onstage at TED 2011
Anthony Atala wows the crowd One of PopSci's favorite regenerative medicine specialists, Anthony Atala, printed a real kidney on stage at the 2011 TED conference Thursday, in a technique that could be used to create new organs from a patient's own tissue rather than relying on donated organs. "It's like baking a cake," Atala said. A few years ago, Atala figured out how to produce human tissue with a desktop inkjet printer, using cells as the printer ink. In a TED talk last year, he described printing heart valves and other tissues. This week at TED, he brought one of his patients on stage. When he was 10, Luke Massella was among the first people to receive a printed kidney - now he's a healthy college student. Related ArticlesResearchers Announce First Implantable Artificial Kidney PrototypeVideo: Artificial Organs Made With A Printer, Grown From Scratch FYI: Are Organs Ever Re-Donated?TagsScience, Rebecca Boyle, anthony atala,...