3D Printing Creates Healthy Retinal Cells

The recent boom in 3D printing that has brought everything from intricate custom machine parts to consumer goods and fashion accessories has hit a new landmark in biological fabrication. According to published findings from researchers at Cambridge, the process is now responsible for creating retinal cells that could be used to treat conditions such as macular degeneration. The report, which was recently published in the journal Biofabrication, describes the printing of both ganglion and glial cells from the retina of adult rats. The research marks the first time printing has successfully created mature central nervous system cells. Furthermore, the report from Cambridge details that cells remained healthy and retained their ability to survive and grow in culture. The Cambridge team plans to extend work to printing other retinal cells and to studying whether photoreceptors can also be created through printing. In addition, they hope to investigate whether their work can be developed for commercial scale using more sophisticated print heads. For more details, see the press release from Cambridge University.

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Comments

Daria's picture

Its really interesting to see what things you can do with 3d Prinint, I hope that this technology will help to improve the lifes of many people.