By Allan Maurer

CLEMSON, SC—Researchers at Clemson University have printed live, beating heart cells with off-the-shelf inkjet technology. In a decade, an improved version of the process may be used to print patches to repair diseased or dead heart tissue.

Tom Boland, associate professor in Clemson’s bioengineering department and Catalin Baicu of the Medical University of South Carolina, presented their findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference in San Francisco Sunday.

Since Boland’s 2004 discovery of the technology, “printing” tissues has focused on materials for hard tissue applications such as in the jawbone. But the new research focused on precise placement of cells, which is necessary to achieving function in soft tissue such as the heart.

“The breakthrough with this technology is that cells now can be precision-placed virtually instantaneously with the materials that make up a scaffold to hold the cells in place,” Boland says.

Previously cells were added to prefabricated scaffolds in a lengthy, less efficient process.

The promise of regenerative medicine

The scaffolding technology is similar to that used by Dr. Anthony Atala at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC. Dr. Atala has created bladders from a patient’s own cells and is working on creating other working organs in the lab that could one day replace damaged human organs.

“We’re looking at applying some of our technology with them and work together with them,” says Boland. He notes that his printing technology might use a patient’s own cells, stem cells or others that could be treated to act as heart cells.

Boland tells TechJournal South that eventually the technique of printing live heart cells might be used to patch cardiac tissue damaged by a heart attack or other injury.

One of the difficulties is getting the printed cells to contract at the 12 to 14 percent level necessary. The new procedure “reinvented the process” to get contraction to 8 or 9 percent. “We’re working on another strategy to get it to the required amount,” he says.

Boland says that the researchers are looking at working with a company or starting one based on the tissue-printing technology, but may find it works better on other tissues initially.

He says it will be ten years before it is developed enough to create a patch for broken hearts. Even after they get the cells to contract sufficiently, “There are a lot of other things we need to do, such as seeing how this would actually work in an animal,” he says. He’s optimistic, however.

“Regenerative medicine has the potential to revolutionize a lot of medical care,” he says.

In addition to Boland and Baicu, scientists Xiaofeng Cui of Clemson, Michael Aho and Michael Zile, both of MUSC, contributed to the research, which was funded with a NASA grant.
For more information see: www.clemson.edu

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