Students Develop Printer for Making Blood Vessels

Students at Colorado State University (Fort Collins) have developed a printer that can 'print' artificial blood vessels from living cells. In contrast to current technologies, which can produce 2-D blood vessels, the students' printer is capable of creating 3-D scaffolds with cells embedded throughout them.

The printer, according to Colorado State mechanical engineering professor David Prawel, has three printer heads, each of which is loaded with a syringe. While one syringe deposits a polymer that creates a 3-D scaffold for housing the cells, the other two are filled with the cells themselves. "The polymer becomes the vessel, and the cells live on it," Prawel explains. "The whole process is only about four minutes long."

The gadget is still in the developmental stage and is not poised for commercialization. However, because it is inexpensive, Prawel imagines that it could serve as an alternative to the use of vascular grafts in Third World countries.