Drink Up? 3D Printers Are Now Building Tiny Human Livers
Whether you’re a really small alcoholic, or a budding Hannibal Lecter too scared to kill but dying for a main course to accompany the fava beans, this is good news:
Lab-grown livers have come a step closer to reality thanks to a 3D printer loaded with cells (see video above). Created by Organovo in San Diego, California, future versions of the system could produce chunks of liver for transplant…
Organovo’s ultimate goal is to create human-sized structures suitable for transplant; the big hurdle is being able to print larger branched networks of blood vessels to nourish such an organ. The company unveiled the mini-livers at the annual Experimental Biology conference this week in Boston.
I hope you were sitting down for this news, because otherwise you’d be forced to “Stand and 3D Liver!”
(Had to force that into the story somehow.)
Source: NewScientist via Gizmodo
About The Author
Luke Y. Thompson has been writing professionally about movies and pop-culture since 1999, and has also been an actor in some extremely cheap culty and horror movies you will probably never hear much about (he is nonetheless mostly proud of them, as he met his wife on one). As editor of The Robot's Voice since 2012, he can take the blame for the majority of the site's content, all of which he creates because he loves you very, very much. (Although he loves nachos more. Sorry.) Prior to TRV, Luke wrote for publications that include the New Times LA, Los Angeles CityBeat, E! Online, OC Weekly, Geekweek, GeekChicDaily, The L.A. Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Nerdist