First Ever 3-D Printed Heart

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among both men and women in the world. Heart transplantation is currently the only treatment available to patients with end-stage heart failure. With the shortage of heart donors, the need to develop new approaches to regenerate the diseased heart is necessary.

Today, on 17th April Researchers from Tel Aviv University, Israel have made world's first 3D printed vascularised engineered heart using a patient's own tissues and biological materials. Researchers managed to produce an entire heart, complete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers. Their findings were published in Advanced Science Magazine.

This first 3D heart is the size of a rabbit’s heart which took about 3 hours to print. The cells are currently able to contract, but not yet have the ability to pump. Though, it is a noteworthy improvement over previous attempts that only printed simple tissues without vessels. Professor Tal Dvir, who led the research now hope to stimulate the printed heart into functioning like a real one.

3-D printing -

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. 3D printing belongs to a class of techniques known as 'building objects layer by layer.' Today, 3D printers not only make jewellery and toothbrushes but also football boots, racing-car parts, custom-designed cakes, human organs, aeroplane parts and even more efficient lithium-ion batteries. One of the key advantages of 3D printing is the ability to produce very complex shapes or geometries and, a prerequisite for producing any 3D printed part is just a digital 3D model.

How 3-D heart was made?

• The process of creating the heart started with a biopsy of fatty tissue taken from patients.

• The cellular material from the tissues was used as the 'ink' for the print job.

• That allowed researchers to create complex tissue models including cardiac patches and eventually an entire heart.

• First 3D heart is not the actual size of human heart but a complete prototype. But the technology that made it possible could eventually lead to the production of a human-sized organ.

• Currently, the hearts can only contract but researchers plan on culturing the 3D printed hearts and teaching them how to operate like the real ones.

• Once that process is complete, they will attempt to transplant them into animal models first.

With the evolution of technology and scientific approaches all over the globe, we can now not only be hopeful but positive about development of many complex structures of human body with the help of 3-D printing.