Organ transplantation is one of modern medicine's greatest advances, but unfortunately there aren’t enough donors. This leads to the fact that every day in the US 20 people on average die waiting for an organ donation. In the future, organ donation will become a thing of the past, as we will have the ability to simply print organs with special 3D printers.
The History of Organ and Tissue Transplant
The first attempts for curing illness and injury by transplanting organs date back to the middle ages. Nevertheless, the scientific knowledge and surgical techniques that have made modern transplant medicine possible were only discovered in the 19th century.
This first successful transplantation was of bone, skin and corneas. The first kidney transplant was performed in 1954 by Dr. Joseph E. Murray, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990. In 1967, a South African heart surgeon named Christian Bernard made the first human heart transplant.
Over the years, transplant medicine has accelerated, and more types of organ transplantation have become available. Last year, for example, the world’s first successful penis and scrotum transplant were performed.
The Lack of Donors
While there is a constant growth in demand for healthy body parts for transplantation, commercial trade in human organs is illegal in most parts of the world. In fact, Iran is the only nation that allows organs to be bought and sold for money. This had created a new global problem - organ shortage.
In most countries, the only way to get a suitable organ is via donation, but while many people say that they support organ donation in theory, in practice the number of people who actually register as organ donors is much smaller. In the U.K., for example, more than 90 percent of people say they support organ donation in opinion polls, but less than one-third of that number are registered donors.
The reasons why people don’t donate their organs vary. Some people don’t trust medical professionals and are afraid that if a doctor knows you are a registered donor, they won’t do everything they can to save your life.
Religion is another inhibiting factor. Some researches have shown that Catholics are less likely to donate than other religious groups, despite the Vatican’s official position in favor of it. It seems that this is due to a belief in the afterlife and the concern for maintaining body's integrity.
It could also be simple disgust. A 2011 study in Scotland found that non-donors reported higher levels of a basic disgust response to the idea of organ procurement or transplantation that was defined as the “ick” factor.
A deadly impact
Whatever the reasons are, the organ shortage has a deadly impact. There are currently more than 120,000 people waiting for lifesaving organ transplants in the U.S. alone. Every 14 minutes someone is added to the kidney transplant list, and the median wait time for an individual’s first kidney transplant stands at 3.6 years. This leads to the sad fact that only in the U.S. 13 people die every single day while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant.
There are various initiatives for dealing with this shortage, either by educating high school students about organ donations or by changing the law so that people will be presumed to be organ donors unless they have specifically recorded their decision not to be. There are even growing voices calling to let people sell their organs, arguing that on the black market a kidney can sell for $160,000, which could be very helpful for some people. Nonetheless, the solution for this severe problem is likely to come from a revolutionary scientific development - organ printing.
3D Bioprinting
3D printing is any of various processes in which material is joined or solidified under computer control to create a three-dimensional object. While the first 3D printer was created in 1983, only in 2006, the technology became public domain as the patent protecting it expired. Today, 3D printing allows us to print many things - from toys and sculptures to clothing and even guns.
3D bioprinting is the utilization of 3D printing techniques to combine cells and biomaterials to fabricate biomedical parts that imitate natural tissue characteristics. A 3D bio-printer uses a special liquid material called "bio-ink”, which is a made from living cells, and utilizes the layer-by-layer method to deposit the bioink and create tissue-like structures that are later used in medical and tissue engineering fields.
While bioprinting technology is quit new, it already has some practical implementations. Recently, scientists successfully created a bioprinter that can print skin to heal wounds. By mixing skin cells involved in wound healing with a hydrogel and then placing them in the bioprinter, it’s now possible to create skin layers that will help the healing process.
It should be noted that the system is still in the proof-of-concept stage, yet since its potential is so huge, it arouses great interest. And of course – skin priming is just the tip of the iceberg.
Much more than skin
In 2017, a team from the University of Glasgow developed a new technique called “nanokicking” to grow 3D samples of mineralized bone for the first time. Using this method, the researchers were able to turn stem cells taken from human donors into 3D bone grafts. These grafts could be ready for implantation as early 2020.
In 2018, the first human corneas were 3D printed by scientists at Newcastle University. Millions of people around the world suffer from corneal blindness due to disease or scarring and thus require corneal transplants.
Organovo is a bioprinting company, that has already demonstrated that it can 3D print human liver tissue patches, ehich can be implanted in mice and be functionally beneficial. These partial liver transplants are currently targeted for human trials in 2020.
Biolife4D is a biotech startup that aims to create a technology that will enable bio-printing ahuman heart. Surprisingly, the heart is actually one of the easiest organs to recreate since it doesn’t employ any complex biochemical reactions. Rather, its primary function is to act as a pump.
The holy grail of bio-pointing
According to the national kidney foundation, 1 out of 7 American adults (about 30 million) are estimated to currently have chronic kidney disease, and over 660,000 Americans experience irreversible kidney failure, or end-stage renal disease (ESRD), and require dialysis or a kidney transplant to survive.
Unfortunately, the kidney has a very complex structure that is necessary for its function. This is what make the 3D printed kidney the most difficult to produce. Yet as the potential is so huge, we can assume that it’s only a matter of time until the world’s first artificial kidney is bio-printed.
The long term implementation
As bioprinting technology is still at its early stages and no transplantation of a bioprinted organ has been performed yet, it’s impossible to predict the long term implementations of this technology.
There are a growing number of people who believe in naturopathic medicine or "self-healing” principles – for them, and for many others who have lost their trust in the medical establishment, the idea of transplanting an artificially produced organ is Incomprehensible.
It will probably take years for this technology to mature and even more time for us to fully appreciate it, but it’s very likely that organ printing technology will eventually have a great positive effect on our life expectancy and also the quality of our lives.
In Conclusion
Organ Printing is undoubtedly one of those cases where real-life technological developments seem crazier than sci-fi movies ideas. As it seems, there is a good chance that one day in the future we can simply print any part of ourselves that we need. But who knows – maybe in the future we won’t even need our body… But that's a whole different story.