Team members
Dragos Dasoveanu dcd29
Justin Park jhp35
Nelson Yan ny37
Ming Kong mk422
Michael Lazar mbl34
Organs as a commodity
http://www.newsweek.com/id/137544
A link to an interesting article in newsweek about organ bank issues, and ethical implications of a more complicated problem than tissue printing. In the beginning it also has some useful statistics.
The military plans to invest money into regenerative medicine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/136309
The article about regenerative medicine as a developing field. A quick overview .
Tissue Printing Discussion from 5-28-08
**2 focuses: inkjet and laser printer
(1st paragraph) Points for what our articles will be about:
Possible anecdote for introduction:
Using statistics such as # of people waiting for organ transplants and the difficulty of finding organs (such as finding matches for organs).
Old people can get organs as well.
Also, there will be no organ rejections in the future since cells are taken from organ receiver’s body.
(2nd paragraph) Pitch for Scientific America:
1. Scientific America has not have a major article on this technology
2. Why is it important for the future?
3. What type of benefits our society will have with this technology?
4. Why the readers of Scientific America will want to read this
Points for actual paper:
Topics our paper will contain:
1. Technological Specification of inkjet and laser printer
2. Practical use of inkjet and laser printer
3. Challenges of these technologies (Medical, Social, Economical)
4. Social Consequences that will be solved
Social consequences:
1. People getting organs from animals(or organs grown in animals)
2. Organs trafficking
3. People trying to make selling organs legal**
5-30-08
Query Letter
John Rennie
Editor in Chief
415 Madison Ave #1300
New York, NY 10017
May 30, 2008
Dear Mr. Rennie,
The annual report for 2007 released by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients states that 17,000 people were in need of a new liver due to disease or injury. 5,000 of them received a liver transplant, 2,000 died and the rest continued to wait in the hopes that a compatible donor will be found. The five year survival rate of those lucky enough to receive a liver transplant is on average 70% depending on the medical history of the donor and recipient.
The solution to the medical and social problem of organ shortages as well as the risky lifelong post-transplantation therapies might be an application of tissue engineering in the form of organ printing. This new technology allows human tissue to be deposited on a biocompatible substrate with the goal of creating complex 3D structures such as organs. By using readily available technology in the form of regular printers, the process of building an organ de novo can become an affordable, safe and ethical way of curbing human organ shortages. With numerous scientific studies compellingly suggesting the technique’s feasibility, the prospect of organ printing might someday become a reality.
Our article on tissue printing, which can potentially be applied to create organs, would complement the May 10th, 2004 article entitled “Body Building.” In that article, the use of ink-jet printers to make 3D structures was mentioned, as well as an extra-cellular matrix using hydrogels. Since then, significant advances have been made in tissue engineering, including the design of a laser tissue printer, as well as the successful printing of avian embryonic heart tubes.
Tissue printing with inkjet and laser printers represents the next stage in tissue engineering that holds the prospect of solving the issue of organ transplant shortages. The advantages of tissue printing over existing technologies such as tissue scaffolding include a faster and more flexible process of creating tissues or organs from one’s own body cells. Furthermore, current experiments are being conducted in order to increase the efficiency and precision of this technology. Recently, there has been success in layering viable heart cells to create vascularized tubular heart tissue. Finally, there are social implications that arise such as the intense debate on stem cell policies that might affect the development and funding of tissue printing.
As a team of students from Cornell University, our various engineering backgrounds will ensure a unique yet multifaceted perspective on this topic. For example, one member of our team has done extensive biomedical research while another member of our team has keen understanding of electrical applications. Finally, a couple of our team members have written communication experiences for several prestigious publications in the Cornell community.
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to an opportunity to share the entire manuscript with you soon.
Sincerely,
Team 3
Stimson G25
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
6-04-2008
Article Name from SciAm: New Predictors of Disease (March 2007)
Introduction —Ming and Christian
• Present the social problem of organ transplants using statistic from finding organs
• Present current solutions and methods, and the biological limitation of these procedures. (Box with diagrams on the biology of organ transplants)
• Last sentence: tissue engineering as a solution
Transition: Early solution for creating organs - Nelson
• Tissue scaffolding (1 paragraph) – Present the method and shortcoming of it being applied to organs
Tissue Printing: The Future of Tissue Engineering – Christian and Justin
Technology and advantages and disadvantages (Scientific Challenges) (includes recent studies and research of each)
1) Inkjet
2) Laser
(Box with diagram on each technology)
Social implications (Practical Challenges) – Mike and Nelson
• Positive implications (Nelson)
1) Eliminates arbitrary standard in deciding who gets organs or who doesn’t
2) Higher availability
3) Medical tourism(black market)
• Negative implications (Mike)
1) Stems cells
2) Religious problem, conflicts and policy
Conclusion
Link for Obstacles and limitation of Inkjet Printing Right now
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=1603783&page=2
** Introduction**
Itroduction.doc
** Social Implications**
Social Implications - Rough Draft2.doc
** Technology so far **
tech.doc
Transition Tissue Scaffolding
Transition: tissue scaffolding
Advantages of Tissue Printing
Advantages of Tissue Printing.doc
Transition
Several printing technologies have
demonstrated the ability to create porous polymer scaffolds
with both macroscopic and inherent microscopic
structure.13,14 This ability is the major advantage that sets
these techniques apart from traditional tissue engineering,
where homogeneous scaffolds are crafted with only
crude macroscopic form.
Even when scaffolds are built to include microscopic
structure, cellular structure is usually formed by seeding
the porous material with cells, resulting in random cellular
attachment and little organization or vascularization
in the initial construct. This seeding approach leaves a
homogeneous mass of cells that does not resemble the
inherent multicell, multimaterial, heterogeneous structure
of tissue. A more advanced method of cell seeding, perhaps
one that could place different cells and biomaterials
into the scaffold in structured patterns, could create
heterogeneous cell constructs and form an enhanced starting
point for tissue growth. One method to accomplish
this type of cell seeding would be to use a tool capable
of printing cells into single layers of tissue scaffolds, and
then using a layer-by-layer approach to build entire constructs
that mimic natural tissue.
As of 2007, the brightest hope for cellular regeneration and repair lies in tissue scaffolding. The technique involves depositing the patient’s own cells that are grown in lab cultures in a homogeneous scaffolds crafted with only crude macroscopic form, and transporting the whole matured structure to the damaged human body parts afterward. The structure will fuse with the damaged tissue, and heal the wound of the patient overtime. This technology is innovational because it uses cells from the patient himself. As a result, scarring can be reduced if applied to damaged skin and no rejection will occur at all. Despite all the promises of this technology, it has so far proven to be successful only in repairing skin and cartilages. The difficulty for implementing this technology in organs lies in creating a feasible 3D scaffold that is viable with the complex nature and structures of organs. For example, organs tissues have very complex architecture composed of multicells with different functions and specific capillary networks that are still beyond the ability of current scaffold fabrication technology (Liu). A more advanced method of cell seeding, perhaps one that could place different cells and biomaterials into the scaffold in structured patterns, could create heterogeneous cell constructs and form an enhanced starting point for tissue growth. One method to accomplish this type of cell seeding would be to use a tool capable of printing cells into single layers of tissue scaffolds, and then using a layer-by-layer approach to build the entire constructs that mimic natural tissue (Christian’s article). Given the setbacks and limitation of tissue scaffolding, the hopes of creating organs that will have perfect compatibility seem remote. However, the prospects of inkjet and laser printing of organs promise to change this belief.
Conclusion
Future applications of tissue engineering and tissue printing could range across medical disciplines and include burn treatments in the form of skin grafts, dental implants as well as organ, bone and cartilage transplants and repair. However before all these applications can become real this relatively new branch of engineering has many challenges ahead such as finding reliable sources of compatible cells, developing methods for differentiating stem cells into functional tissues, advancing methods of tissue preservation and optimizing technologies like inkjet and laser printers necessary to build complex organ structures.
note from justin
tech2.doc is the name of the finished tech file.
Article Bibliography
Please add your sources to this list.
Social Implications Section
“FAQ About Liver Transplantion.” University of Miami. 2007. 11 June 2008. <http://surgery.med.miami.edu/x320.xml>.
Barber, Norm. The Nasty Side Of Organ Transplanting. 2007. 11 June 2008.
<http://www.geocities.com/organdonate/organsellingorgantheft.html>.
Winickoff, David E. “Governing stem cell research in California and the USA: towards a social infrastructure.” Trends in Biotechnology. Volume 24, Issue 9, September 2006, Pages 390-394.
FINAL ARTICLE (rough draft)
Final Article.doc
Materials Nelson will touch on for presentation
Organ Tourism.doc
The final version of the article