Strange: Human kidney printing machine

At a recent conference of a nonprofit organization The ideas worth spreading (TED) in Long Beach, California (USA), surgeon Anthony Atala used a special machine to successfully build one. The kidney is three-dimensional in front of the audience.

Surgeon Anthony Atala

Discovery site reported that Anthony Atala - a surgeon at Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine has "printed" a real human kidney thanks to a special machine, which helps organ transplants without volunteers. donate these agencies.

" It's like mixing a cake, " Atala said while performing the process of making a new kidney on the stage of the TED conference in Long Beach.

First of all, doctors use scanners to acquire 3D images of a kidney that needs to be replaced. In the next step, he used a half-stamp size tissue sample to seed the computerized process. After that, the organ "printer" works one after another to produce a kidney transplant that replicates the patient's tissue sample.

"Printer" kidney

Student Luke Massella was among the first to receive a "printed kidney" in a research study a decade ago, when he was 10 years old. Massella said, he was born with a spinal deformity (spina bifida) and two kidneys were inactive.

"Currently, I am attending college and basically trying to live normally like others. The transplant surgery (" printing kidney ") saved my life and helped me to be like today. " , Massella said.

According to Dr. Atala, about 90% of patients waiting for transplant surgery are really needy and this need exceeds the capacity of organ donors. " There is a serious crisis of medical care regarding the lack of organs. Medicine has done a great job of prolonging our lifespan and when we get older, internal organs. Our organs cannot stand it either, "Mr. Atala stressed.

The special kidney "in" machine invented by Mr. Atala is expected to contribute to solving the scarcity of kidneys needed for transplant to save patients.