The inkjet approach to building life

If you print over and over on a single piece of paper, the ink layers will eventually build up a three-dimensional structure. What if, scientists are asking, you use that same inkjet technology to print layers of cells on a tissue matrix? Can you eventually build up a living structure like a heart or a kidney?

Paul Calvert, a professor of materials and textiles at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, thinks it's a long-term possibility.

In a perspective published in the Oct. 12 issue of the journal Science, Calvert pointed to a recent milestone on that path - the successful printing of living cells using inkjet technology - as a way to highlight its future potential.

"We really didn't expect that animal cells would get through this without being destroyed," said Calvert, whose team was one of several around the world to have accomplished the feat. "But we've proven that cells are printable objects. Now we can wonder if maybe we can come really close to doing what biology does, putting down layers one by one to build living things."

Using rebuilt consumer printers with the paperfeed system replaced by a computer driven platform that moves the sample under the nozzle, Calvert said the next step is to print different cells on top of one another to study the way they communicate with each other.

In the future, though, he said it's not far-fetched to imagine printing larger structures, such as implantable organs.

"When it comes to doing whole organs, the biology is going to be more complicated than we can imagine," Calvert said. "There are a lot of medical possibilities that don't pan out. Whether this will be one, we don't know yet. The only way to figure it out is by going there."

BILLY BAKER