Wound healing is a complex and dynamic process of restoring cellular structures and tissue layers after an injury or surgery. The natural process of healing is always takes time and the care associated with it is also difficult. There is a new approach towards the minimization of the duration and the pain related to healing of wounds which is termed as “bio-printing.” This is a new field that employs engineering and research and involves in deposition of biological materials on the living cells and tissues. A team of researchers at the Wake Forest have shown development of a possibility of using simple ink jet technology in bio-printing.
In the developmental stages, bio-printers today lack fine-tuning and the speed that shall make it available for commercial deployment. Small drops of 100 Pico liters can be deposited on the skin tissue by these bio-printers, at a speed of tens of thousands of such cells per second. Instead of the use of ink to print, the use of cells to print tissues and organs in a three-dimensional shape is under process, says Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. This uses ink-jet printers for the printing purpose.
Almost the same technology that we use in most home office printing is applied here. That for instance we apply a program like PowerPoint to draw the tissue or organ to be printed. Then the cells for the printing process are placed in the reservoirs as are the ink stored in cartridges. Then the laser scans the wound. It then determines the size and depth, the computer controls the cells to be released on the wound surface.
The science of bio-printing is just catching up with computer technology but it is not a new one. The key to this development is the stem cell technology in which the advancements have paved way for the use of bio-printing techniques for healing the wounds.
The basic benefits of the technique are that it is no more required to surgically move skin from one part of the body to another. Rather it is the use of bio-prints to build the skin in place of the wound. The ink used for instance in tissue healing of burns, is harvested skin cells along with the stem cells and nutrients. The layer of fibroblast skin cells are first sprayed on to act as a substrate followed by a protective layer of keratinocyte cells, the stem cells which can speed up healing is added at the end.
This is also seen as a promising approach to speed up healing by the armed forces. The use of bio-printing technique as mobile source in the battle field for wounded soldiers is the ultimate medical technique that is eyed by the armed forces. As the project goals are defined to be a technique in which it is quick enough to cover the wounded area and stabilize it. As other researches have also shown that a delay in covering the wound poses a greater risk of infection, complications and even death. This technology on the long term could be even used to create replacement organs or even entire organisms from raw biological materials.