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THE IMPACT AND RAMIFICATIONS OF LABORATORY GROWTH OF
COMPLEX ORGANS VIA THREE-DIMENSIONAL PRINTING
Jurrien Le ([email protected])
INTRODUCTION
In the year 2014, the National Speech and Debate
Association’s September-October Lincoln Douglas
Debate resolution was announced to be the following:
“Resolved: A just society ought to presume consent for
organ procurement from the deceased.”[1] In the
multitude of debates on that resolution and similarly
relevant pieces of legislation in other debate events, the
costs and benefits of organ donation were researched in
meticulous detail. However, one issue went primarily
unaddressed by the debate community: the root cause of
the need for increasing organ procurement, and what
could be done to alleviate or mitigate that issue. For a
biomedical engineer, this lack of donor organs and
organ tissue not only is an issue that would be dealt with
in their field, but is also an issue that directly impacts
their ability to conduct their own research. Thus, it has
become imperative to begin by analyzing the impact of
the low rate of organ donation in society, and explaining
the current technologies available to deal with the issue,
with a particular focus on one of the more promising
means, which is lab growth of artificial organs via threedimensional printing.
CURRENT IMPACT OF LACK OF
DONOR ORGANS ON SOCIETY
In modern society, the importance of human
organs should not be taken for granted. Not only do
organs serve critical roles regarding basic bodily
function inside the human body, but also serve to fulfill
vital functions in society outside of the human body.
One of the most evident functions is the implantation of
harvested organs into people seeking replacement
organs in order to save their lives. Unfortunately, there
lies a stark disparity in the number of people seeking
organs, and the number of organs actually available for
transplant. According to data provided by the Organ
Procurement and Transplantation Network of the United
States Department of Health and Human Services, there
are currently over one hundred and twenty-thousand
candidates on the organ donation waiting list in the
United States[2]. Unfortunately, the number of donor
organs available is a nowhere near adequate amount to
deal with this backlog, with United Network for Organ
Sharing data noting that only eleven thousand, seven
hundred, and seventy-six donor organs have been
recovered this year[3]. This lack of organs for those
University of Pittsburgh, Swanson School of Engineering 1
Submission Date 11/1/2016
seeking organ transplant has tangible consequences,
with approximately twenty-two people dying each day
in the United States while awaiting an organ
transplant[3].
Furthermore, the lack of available donor organs
has further ramifications for the state and capability of
scientific medical research and testing, many of which
are thoroughly detrimental. Human organ tissue has
tremendous value for companies engaging in biomedical
research and drug testing, for the purposes of
ascertaining the efficacy of specific treatments on
diseases or disorder. Unfortunately, due to the current
scarcity and scarcity-induced cost of human tissue,
researchers have been forced to test treatments on
animal cells, which prolongs the length and long term
cost of testing, due to the differences between human
cells and animal cells, as reported by the Washington
Post[4]. Thus, increasing the availability of organ tissue
to medical researchers would decrease the time taken
for testing of promising drug treatments, and shorten the
transition from laboratory to market for these disease
treatments. Given the increasing prevalence of drug
resistant viruses, as well as the rising cost of drug
treatment in the United States, the importance of
developing new drug treatments to circumvent
developed drug resistance and driving down drug
treatment prices via increased competition in the
treatment market can not be understated.
ANALYSIS OF LABORATORYMEDIATED ORGAN CREATION
Aside from actually increasing the number of organ
donors in the United States, one of the more viable and
ethical solutions for increasing the availability of human
organs and organ tissue for medical purposes is the
artificial creation of organs and organ tissue in the lab.
With the tremendous advancements in stem cell
harvesting, creation, and modification techniques made
in recent years, laboratory growth of organs has
significantly increased in viability, and also serves to
provide its own bevy of benefits compared to traditional
donor-harvested organs. First, laboratory-created organs
are grown with either the patient’s own cells, or with
cells grown from stem cells that have been wiped of
proteins that trigger immune responses. This means that
with custom lab grown organs, the need for side effect
prone immune-suppressing medication is obviated,
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along with the risks involved with immune system
rejection of organs harvested from donors, as reported
by ABC news[5]. The second notable benefit of lab
grown organs is that such organs can be custom made to
uniquely fit the physiology of the patient who receives
such an organ[6]. Continued investment of time,
research, and economic resources into furthering
artificial organ creation is imperative, as artificial organ
creation is what Professor Clare Blackburn of the MRC
Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of
Edinburgh calls “one of the ‘holy grails’ in regenerative
medicine”, and is a process that can help solve for the
issues affecting those seeking organ transplants as well
as those in the medical research community, providing
significant benefits over the current status quo
situation[7].
dimensional printing, organic biomaterial and living
cells can also be used as material.
The precision inherent with three-dimensional
printing technology provides a multitude of benefits to
the artificial organ creation process. First, threedimensional printing allows for the rapid and precise
creation of complex organic scaffolding upon which
organs and organ tissue can be grown effectively and
efficiently into needed shapes and structures[9]. This
would reduce the time and cost expenditure of growing
organ tissue, which would notably increase the
availability of useable human organ tissue to medical
researchers. Furthermore, the precision of three
dimensional printing allows for the relatively rapid
creation and precise placement of unique cells and
blood vessel networks in complex organs, due to the
fact that such cells and vessels are literally printed into
the organ as part of the organ blueprint used in the
printing process[10]. Thus, the viability of threedimensional printed organs compared to traditional lab
grown organs would be significantly higher, due to the
greater control that scientists would have over the
structure of the organ.
USE OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL
PRINTING TECHNOLOGY IN ORGAN
CREATION
Unfortunately, there remains a prominent issue
with existing artificial organ creation methods. Some
commonly sought organs, such as the kidneys and liver,
have significantly more complex structures, involving
multiple types of cells and networks of blood vessels
that are absolutely essential to the proper continued
function of the organ in a human body. This inherent
complexity makes it significantly more difficult for
these organs to be created in a lab, where precision at
the microscopic scale is needed for proper incorporation
of these vessels and cells into a functioning organ, as
noted by the BBC[8]. It is this issue that has been a
primary inhibitor of the development of artificial
complex organ laboratory creation, to which the
inception and development of three-dimensional
printing technology is one of the most viable and
prominent solutions.
At the most basic level, three-dimensional printing
is virtually identical to conventional inkjet printing
methods, in which an inkjet or extruder nozzle is used to
deposit a layer of material onto a printing base, which
can be a sheet of paper for conventional inkjet printing,
or a different material, dependent on the item printed
and material used in printing. Where three-dimensional
printing methods differ from conventional printing
methods is in the fact that a three-dimensional printer
sprays or extrudes multiple micrometer-thin layers of
material, building the desired object up layer by layer
until the structure or object is formed. The materials
used in three-dimensional printing vary, with the most
common material used being multiple unique blends of
plastic. However, due to the rapid progression of
technological development in the realm of three-
FUTURE PATH OF THREEDIMENSIONAL ORGAN PRINTING
Given that the current state of three-dimensional
printing of complex organs is still largely experimental
and untested, the logical next step would be to print out
and test the viability of three-dimensional printing of a
complex organ. With further development, this
technology could hypothetically bring about the end of
the current organ shortage affecting the United States.
The United States currently is a society where hundreds
of thousands of people languish on a waiting list
seeking an organ that they need for continued survival
but don’t even know if they’ll live long enough to get,
while scientists and researchers pay thousands to dollars
for the organ tissue samples they need to effectively
sustain their potentially lifesaving research. With threedimensional organ printing technology, that society
could be a relic of the past. In this future which we
strive for, patients seeking an organ transplant could
have cells harvested, grown, and printed into a viable
transplant organ in a matter of months, while remaining
free from the risks of immune rejection and the need to
take immunosuppressant drugs that have deleterious
side effects. In this same future, scientific biomedical
research continues to blossom and advance at a rapid
pace, unhindered by the previously experienced costs of
either having to purchase organ tissue at a high price, or
work with the experimental complexity of testing with
animal tissue. Instead, medical and pharmaceutical
researchers will be able to print out and grow their own
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organ tissue samples in a three-dimensional printer at
relatively minimal cost, and begin conducting tests of
lifesaving treatments immediately. As it stands, the
potential of three-dimensional organ printing is truly
massive, and it is a technology that should be invested
in and further developed for today’s society, and the
society of future generations.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC459793
3/
[10] Ventola, C. Lee. “Medical Applications for 3D
Printing: Current and Projected Uses”. Pharmacy and
Therapeutics Journal. 10/2014. Accessed 10/31/2016.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC418969
7/
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
[1] "Past Topics” National Speech and Debate
Association. Accessed 10/31/2016.
https://www.speechanddebate.org/topics/
I would like to acknowledge the Leland High
School Speech and Debate team, without which I would
not have been inspired to do research into organ
procurement my junior year of high school.
[2] “Waiting list candidates as of today” Organ
Procurement and Transplantation Network. Accessed
10/31/2016. https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/
[3] “Data” United Network for Organ Sharing.
Accessed 10/31/2016. https://www.unos.org/data/
[4] Paquette, Danielle. “Why drug companies need
human tissue-especially liver” The Washington Post.
7/17/2015. Accessed 10/31/2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/
07/17/why-planned-parenthood-wont-stop-donatingfetal-organs/
[5] Noonan, Jessica. “Lab-Grown ‘Custom’ Organs
May Be Future of Medicine”. ABC News. 6/25/2012.
Accessed 10/31/2016.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/lab-grown-customorgans-future-medicine/story?id=16631764
[6] Locke, Susannah. “An organ shortage is killing
people. Are lab-grown organs the answer?” Vox.
11/20/2014. Accessed 10/31/2016.
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7252365/lab-grownorgans
[7] Centre for Regenerative Medicine. “Fully functional
immune organ grown in mice from lab-created cells”.
Centre for Regenerative Medicine. 8/24/2014. Accessed
10/31/2016. http://www.crm.ed.ac.uk/news/fullyfunctional-immune-organ-grown-mice-lab-created-cells
[8] Yong, Ed. “Will we ever…grow synthetic organs in
the lab?” BBC Future. 2/24/2012. Accessed 10/31/2016.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120223-will-weever-create-organs
[9] A. Do, S. Geary, B. Khorsand, A. Salem. “3D
Printing of Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration
Applications”. US National Library of Medicine.
6/10/2015. Accessed 10/31/2016.
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