3D PRINTED ORGANS for transplantation

There is a major health crisis in terms of the shortage

of organs. Since 2013, the total number of patients
requiring a transplant has doubled while the number
of available donor organs has remained relatively the
same. According to the Health Resources & Services
Administration, every day 17 people die waiting for an
organ transplant in the US. This issue is now a public
health crisis. Fortunately, due to the advancement of
technology, three-dimensional (3D)-printed organs
have become a reality.

In 2014, a California-based company called Organovo was the first to successfully

engineer commercially available 3D-bioprinted human livers and kidneys. 3D printing in
healthcare is used to create living human cells or tissues for regenerative medicine and tissue
engineering purposes. The process of 3D printing typically begins with obtaining a
sample of a patient’s own cells to grow and expand outside the body in a sterile
incubator or bioreactor. These cells are then fed with nutrients called ‘media’ and mixed
with a gel that acts as a glue. This mixture is then loaded into a printing chamber to build
tissues by building the material up layer by layer.

Currently, the biggest challenge is to get the organs to function as they should. Despite
the tremendous amount of progress being made in this field, Dr Anthony Atala and
his colleagues at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are conservative
with their estimate about the number of years remaining before fully functioning 3D-
printed organs can be implanted into humans.

In spite of the unknown timeline of when bioprinting organs can become an available
option to patients, researchers are optimistic about the affordability of it for patients and
their caregivers. The cost associated with organ failure is very high: just to keep a
patient on dialysis is estimated to cost around $270,000 in Canada, according to
Ferguson and colleagues. According to research published by the American Society of
Nephrology, in 2020 the average cost of a kidney transplant was $442,500, while 3D
printers retail for upwards of $100,000, depending on their complexity. Adding costs of
surgery and maintaining the 3D-printed organs could still be cheaper than a kidney
transplant, according to Jennifer Lewis, a professor at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute
for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

This is an exciting field that is still being developed and its speculated affordability is a
good sign for patients and their caregivers.