Americans are working on the technology of "printing" the skin using a 3D printer

A group of American scientists from the Institute of Restorative (Regenerative) Medicine at Wake Forest University (by the way, this is a rather prestigious private university) recently announced its intention to create reliable technology of "bioprinting". Scientists use 3D printers for their research, which are becoming increasingly popular in the scientific community. At the time of their appearance, these printers were considered by many as quite interesting devices that would not receive practical application. However, everything turned out to be completely wrong: designers, builders, genetics and representatives of many other areas of activity began to use 3D printers in everyday work. A team of American scientists led by James Yoo has been working on bioprinting technology for quite some time,

So, scientists recently published a work that describes a successful experiment to restore a fragment of a damaged animal bone by a “printed” fragment on a 3D printer. Now scientists are trying to create a really reliable method of “printing” human skin, since it is the skin that is one of the most popular organs (yes, the skin is the organ, and the largest in our body) in medicine. For example, this is very much in demand in burn departments of hospitals.

In addition, scientists plan to create a portable device that can work in the field. Such a device, by design, should itself determine the degree of skin damage, determine, present the received information in the form of 3D images, and analyze how many layers of cells should be replaced by artificial skin.

In fact, if this team succeeds, it will be close to printing more complex organs, bones and other parts of the body. As mentioned above, scientists conducted a fairly successful experiment with the replacement of damaged fragments of animal bones.

All this sounds like a fantasy, but every year more and more fantastic technologies appear that are already perceived without much surprise. Well, we will wait until scientists really learn how to "print" organs.

Via dvice + bbc