3D printing technology has created brain-like tissue for the first time. Will it be a complete brain?

The US "Fun Science" website recently reported that British scientists have recently used the new 3D printing technology to print a brain-like tissue that is as soft as the human brain for the first time, and is an important step toward the final 3D printing of a complete brain.

In the past, only relatively hard materials could be printed in 3D, and soft tissues such as the brain and lungs were generally difficult to obtain through 3D printing. This is because the 3D printing process involves building objects layer by layer, the lower layer is able to support the weight of the growing structure, printing very soft materials, and prone to collapse of the underlying material.

This time, the researchers used a new type of composite hydrogel (containing water-soluble synthetic polyvinyl alcohol and plant gel) to print out a three-dimensional scaffold, then printed the structure with collagen and filled it with human cells. A brain-like soft tissue was obtained.

Tan Zhengchu, a lead author of the new study and a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, said: "3D printing technology is expected to enable doctors to use their own cells to create custom organs for them, thus greatly reducing the serious shortage of transplanted organs. But the biological structures previously printed in 3D are mostly bones or hard organs like the liver and kidneys, and soft tissues such as the brain are difficult to print in 3D."

In order to solve the problem of printing soft tissue, the researchers carried out a cooling process during the printing process. Tan Zhengchu said: "We are using a low temperature printing process, which means that the lower layer is frozen, which makes it very stable, the new layer structure can be printed on it, and there will be no collapse of the bottom layer. After printing is complete, we can Let the resulting object slowly thaw and keep the shape."

It is reported that the technology currently has a number of limitations, for example, they can only produce small samples of brain-like tissue, not the entire brain. In addition, they plan to further improve the cryogenic technology currently in use.

Researchers believe that using 3D printing technology to get a full-featured complex human organ (brain or lung, etc.) may have to wait for decades, but the technology acquired tissue can help scientists study the brain or lungs in different environments ( Behavior such as brain trauma, etc.).

Science and Technology Daily Editor-in-Chief

The brain can't be faked. It has extremely complex macroscopic and microscopic structures. The cerebral cortex covers most of each hemisphere. The inner tissue of the cerebral cortex is white matter, and the outer surface has a large number of pleated sulcus. But to study the human brain in depth, you must have a decent model. The brain structure is complex and it is a good choice to use 3D printing. It’s just that the technology has natural limitations and can’t be soft. The success of this time is an advancement in engineering, and researchers have finally overcome the problem of soft tissue printing. However, it is still far from building a 3D printed version of the brain with practical meaning. There is no such thing as a thousand miles, and you can only wait slowly.

(Editor)