Tailor-made skin from 'ink' printer

news

Wednesday, 19th January 2005

BREAKTHROUGH: Prof Derby holds a tissue scaffold used in development of new skin

SCIENTISTS at Manchester University have developed a printer able to produce human skin to help wounds heal.

It could be used on patients who have suffered burns and disfigurements. With more research it could even replace broken bones.

Using the same principle as an ink-jet printer, experts are able to take skin cells from a patient's body, multiply them, then print out a tailor-made strip of skin, ready to sew on to the body. The wound's dimensions are entered into the printer to ensure a perfect fit.

The printer, which takes up an area equivalent to three filing cabinets, could see the end of traditional skin and bone grafts.

Scientists at the university's School of Materials have already successfully created skin and believe they will soon be able to create bone and cartilage.

Similar printers are being developed in Japan and the US, but the Manchester team is hoping to beat its competitors by being the first to start clinical trials on patients.

Team leader Professor Brian Derby says that they are the only team in the world to work out how to print human cells without destroying them in the process. He said: "There is a fighting chance that something could come of this in five years if there were clinical trials.

"It's not like printing a sheet of paper. We can print a few millimetres in depth and build it up layer-upon-layer until, in principle, we could produce bone fragments the size of a golf ball.

"It is difficult for a surgeon to reconstruct any complex disfiguring of the face using CT scans, but with this technology we are able to build a fragment which will fit exactly. We can place cells in any designed position to grow tissue or bone."

For the last two years, researchers have been testing the printer using human cell samples taken from patients having hip implants at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

The cells are put into a special printer ink liquid and artificially multiplied.

Then, the printer prints the cells on to a plastic surface, which acts like a scaffold to support the cells. Experts say that the plastic could then be surgically attached to the damaged part of the body and the plastic would dissolve naturally, allowing the body to use the strip of cells to repair the injury.

The printer would revolutionise current treatments, which are based on grafting skin or bone from other parts of the body or replacing broken bones with metal plates. These carry carry a risk of scarring and possible rejection by the body.

But Professor Derby said that they are still working out how to print cells on to the 3D plastic scaffolds to produce bone or cartilage.

He said: "In theory, you could print the scaffolding to create an organ in a day, but we are not quite there yet."