Printing living tissues: 3-D printed vascular networks made of sugar
Sunday, July 1, 2012 - 15:30
in Biology & Nature
New advances in tissue engineering could one day make a replacement liver from a patient's cells, or animal muscle tissue that could be cut into steaks. One problem with making 3-D tissue structures, however, is keeping the interior cells from suffocating. Now, researchers have developed an innovative solution: they've shown that 3-D printed templates of filament networks can be used to rapidly create vasculature and improve the function of engineered living tissues.