Is Organ Printing the Savior of Science?

Article by: Julia Doan

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The doctors who performed and assisted in the first successful kidney transplant

Organ transplants have been around for quite some time now. Throwback to 1954 the first kidney was successfully transplanted into a human body. What a medical marvel it was! Since then patients who unfortunately damage their organs due to accidents and illnesses have been saved through organ transplants, and all are connected through a non-profit organization called The United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS). 

The downside of UNOS is that the system is computer-generated and dynamic, so organ allocation is according to the severity of the case. Being on the transplant waitlist does not guarantee that a patient will receive an organ right away and on average, the waiting time frame of most UNOS-recognised centers is 3-5 years but that can lengthen in some other regions, due to about 10% of patient, especially in older patients they end up dying waiting for a lung or kidney transplant.

Factors that influence where the organs will be allocated:

Medical Emergency

Donor/recipient immune system compatibility

Blood type compatibility

Travel Efficiency

Likelihood of survival

To overcome this issue, science has been working hard to find a solution, and on a life-changing day in 1988, Dr. Robert Klebe of the University of Texas came up with a brilliant idea to use a cyberscribing process which essentially microposition cell adhesion protein and monoclonal antibody using a normal inkjet printer to construct synthetic fibers.

In more recent times, we have come up with a printing material called Bioink (also known as Biotin) that is made up of living cells or synthetic biomaterial and it deposits droplets layer-by-layer onto a hydrogel support or a culture plate which allows the cell to spread and proliferate. It mimics the behavior and structures of natural tissues and theoretically can be carefully engineered to print skin and bone grafts, implants, and even full 3D-printed organs. 

Bioprinting is showing a lot of progress moving in the right direction but printing actual organs is still a few years away from us. As for the time being, a clinical trial led by Arturo Bonilla, M.D. founder, and director of the Microtia-Congenital Ear Deformity Institute in San Antonio, Texas, is being conducted to bioprint living tissue ear transplants for reconstruction for patients with microtia, a rare congenital deformity where one or both outer ears are absent or underdeveloped. So far, it seems that the clinical trials are showing promising results at the rate that it is going, and hope that this will be the new and near future of organ transplants