NASA vascular tissue challenge teams create human tissue with 3D printing
NASA has granted the first and second place to two teams of scientists from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The teams of the institute landed the first and second place in the challenge of Vascular tissues of NASA. The contest allocated to accelerate tissue engineering to benefit people on Earth and space explorers of the future.
The Wake Forest competition teams, called Winston and Wfirm, used different approaches to create human hepatic tissues grown in laboratory enough to survive and function similarly to tissues within the human body. Each equipment used a different 3D printing technique to build a bucket-shaped fabric around a thick centimeter that could operate for 30 days in the laboratory.
The Winston team was the first to complete the trial under the Rules of the Challenge and will receive $ 300,000. The Winston team also has the opportunity to advance its research aboard the ISS. The WFirm team won the second place and received a $ 100,000 prize. NASA points out that two additional teams affiliated with other organizations that continue fighting for the third place and the other reward of $ 100,000.
The research created by the teams will allow the growth and long-term survival of the thick three-dimensional tissue for research and therapeutic applications. Eventually, NASA expects to develop organ bandages and organ replacements. In the short term, the technology that invented the invented equipment could accelerate pharmaceutical tests and disease modeling. NASA admits that more progress is needed to make artificial organs come true. However, the results show the potential of artificial organs developed from the patient’s own cells in the future.
The winning teams used 3D printing technologies to create gel-like molds or scaffolding with a network of channels designed to maintain sufficient levels of oxygen and nutrients to keep the tissues built alive for the 30-day test. The two winning teams used different 3D printed designs and different materials to produce their live tissues.