Off-the-shelf 3D printers could soon create functional hearts, brains, arteries and bones, a team of U.S. researchers revealed in the journal, Science Advances.

Scientists from the Carnegie Mellon University said they were able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3D images of embryonic hearts and 3D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins. This process could be used to create 3D-printed soft implants in which living tissue can grow to form organs in the future, the team said.

A 3D printer creates items by depositing layers of material, just like how ordinary printers lay down ink. The machine uses a wide variety of items such as plastic, ceramic, glass, metal and even more unusual ones like living cells. In the medical field, researchers have used 3D printers to create customised devices for individual patients, such as hearing aids, dental implants and prosthetic hands.

While conventional 3D printers have proven to be successful in manufacturing objects from rigid materials, producing soft materials has reportedly been difficult. “The challenge with soft materials — think about something like Jello that we eat — is that they collapse under their own weight when 3-D printed in air,” said Adam Feinberg, a biomedical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University and senior author of the new study.

To address the issues of 3D printing soft materials, the scientists developed a method of printing items inside a support bath material containing gelatin powder. Feinberg said that they printed one gel inside another gel, which allowed the team to accurately position the soft material as it's being printed, layer by layer.

The researchers used a new technique, which they called FRESH, a short term for “Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels,” to print simplified, proof-of-concept anatomical structures. With this technique, the support gel around the 3D structures can be easily melted and removed by heating it to body temperature. The amount of heat would not damage any delicate biological molecules or living cells printed out in the method, the scientists noted.

Bioprinting is a growing field, but to date, widespread adoption is still limited because most 3D bioprinters are priced at more than US$100,000 (AU$137,845) and require specialised expertise to operate. However, the technique used by Feinberg’s group was implemented on a range of consumer-level 3D printers that cost a hundred times less, by utilising open-source hardware and software.

“Not only is the cost low, but by using open-source software, we have access to fine-tune the print parameters, optimise what we're doing and maximise the quality of what we're printing,” Feinberg said.

For their next steps, the team is working toward incorporating real heart cells into 3D printed tissue structures, providing a scaffold to help form contractile muscle.

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