Science and technology is always working day and night to mimic the creation of God. From learning how an object can fly from the flight of a bird to making artificial intelligence a reality, scientists have always tried their best to learn from nature and create something that will serve human civilization. This attempt of recreating the creations of nature has been so far that researchers have created a 3D-printed heart model using silicon and human cells. But, the full functionality of the real heart is yet to be achieved. In that case it hasn’t matched the real thing yet. The model is not even good for repairing a patient’s real heart.
Achievements
A team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute has developed a technique for 3D-printing long cardiac microfilaments that develop into muscle-like filaments which contract. It is like the heart’s contracting elements which produces tissue thick enough to use in regenerative heart treatments.
SWIFT
SWIFT (Sacrificial Writing in Functional Tissue) is a bio printing technology already existing made by Harvard’s Wyss Institute. The present work is more or less an advanced version of that.
The use of 3D-printed heart
Though there is a lot of work to be done by the researchers in future to achieve the full functionality, the team made it believe that 3D-printed filaments can be used to replace scars caused by heart attacks, or it can be used to create improved disease models. The filaments can be used to patch holes in newborns with congenital heart defects. The best thing is that the patches will grow as those child patients growup.
The news about 3D-printed hearts came into attention after Engadget published a report about it. “Scientists 3D-print a functional piece of a heart” they said it can repair a damaged heart.
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