Harvard researchers develop new technique to create human organs

At Harvard, a group of researchers are developing a solution that will bioprint blood vessels on living tissues. Their paper ‘Biomanufacturing of organ-specific tissues with high cellular density and embedded vascular channels’ published in Science Advances, highlights a new technique called SWIFT (Sacrificial Writing Into Functional Tissue). Their solution could enable the creation of larger organs that could deliver oxygen effectively.

Scientists around the world have been working on growing organs for many years. One issue is that lab-grown organs are often too small for human use and are not sophisticated enough to deliver oxygen to our bodies. Things are changing, not too long ago a team of researchers 3D printed a small human heart in Israel, showcasing the enormous potential of bioprinting technologies for this field. It’s true that bioprinting is very promising for the creation of human organs, but it has to be said that we are still at the beginning stages of this pursuit.

Today, it’s 20 people that die everyday waiting for an organ transplant in the United States, and while more than 30,000 transplants are performed annually, there are over 113,000 patients currently on organ waitlists.