3D Insider: Tiny 3D-Printed Organs Being Used to Battle Biological Attacks

(3Ders.org) Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine is leading a unique $24 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a “body on a chip” that will be used to develop countermeasures against chemical or biological attacks whether from Ebola, Sarin and Ricin. Wake Forest Baptist’s one-of-a-kind 3D printer will be used to print the organoids onto the chip.

The goal is to build a tiny human organs and placed on a chip to see how they react to harmful agents during testing and develop potential therapies. This approach has the potential to reduce the need for testing in animals, which is expensive, slow, and has results that aren’t always applicable to people. “What we are trying to do is create small tissues and organs, on a very miniature scale, a mircochip scale,” said Dr. Anthony Atala, M.D., institute director and lead investigator on the project. “Miniature lab-engineered, organ-like hearts, lungs, livers and blood vessels – linked together with a circulating blood substitute – will be used both to predict the effects of chemical and biologic agents and to test the effectiveness of potential treatments.”