Yahoo News New 3D printer breakthrough offers hope to repair brain injuries
A new 3D printer breakthrough could offer hope to the millions worldwide who live with brain injuries, researchers have claimed.
A team at the University of Oxford demonstrated for the first time that brain cells can be 3D-printed to "mimic the architecture of the cerebral cortex".
They fabricated a two-layered brain tissue by 3D-printing human neural stem cells.
When these printed structures were implanted into mouse brain slices, the cells integrated well with the host tissue.
Lead author Dr Yongcheng Jin, from the university's department of chemistry, said: "This advance marks a significant step towards the fabrication of materials with the full structure and function of natural brain tissues.
"The work will provide a unique opportunity to explore the workings of the human cortex, and in the long term, it will offer hope to individuals who sustain brain injuries."
Senior author, associate professor Francis Szele from the University of Oxford, said: "The use of living brain slices creates a powerful platform for interrogating the utility of 3D printing in brain repair."
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How could this help patients?
Brain injuries, including those caused by trauma, stroke and surgery for brain tumours, typically result in significant damage to the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the human brain).
This can lead to difficulties in cognition, movement and communication.
About 70 million people worldwide suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year, with five million of these cases being severe or fatal.
Tissue regenerative therapies, especially those in which patients are given implants derived from their own stem cells, could be a promising route to treat brain injuries in the future, researchers believe.
Up to now, however, there has been no method to ensure that implanted stem cells mimic the architecture of the brain.
How does it work?
The cortical structure was made from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), which have the potential to produce the cell types found in most human tissues.
A key advantage of using hiPSCs for tissue repair is that they can be easily derived from cells harvested from patients themselves, and therefore would not trigger an immune response.
The hiPSCs were differentiated into neural progenitor cells for two different layers of the cerebral cortex.
The cells were then suspended in solution to generate two "bioinks", which were then printed to produce a two-layered structure. The printed tissues maintained their layered cellular architecture for weeks, researchers said.
When the printed tissues were implanted into mouse brain slices, they showed strong integration. The implanted cells also showed signalling activity, which correlated with that of the host cells.
