A 3-D Printer for Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Steven Cherry: Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrums Techwise Conversations.

3-D printing is being used for all sorts of things, from small plastic parts and microprocessors to a titanium jawbone for transplantation, from wedding cakes, as well be describing in an article in our June issue, to an entire car body, as well be hearing about in a podcast next month. Everything from computer chips to chocolate chips, in other words.

But the most unusual and potentially one of the most beneficial uses has to be that of human embryonic stem cells.

This is a pretty new thing. Researchers have done this with the stem cells of other animals, but it was only last month that a team at Heriot-Watt University, in Scotland, announced the 3-D printing of human stem cells. The work was published in the journal Biofabrication. My guest today is one of the coauthors of the study.

Will [Wenmiao] Shu is at the School of Engineering & Physical Sciences; Biochemistry, Biophysics & Bioengineering at Heriot-Watt University. He joins me by phone from there.

Will, welcome to the podcast.

Will Shu: Hello. Hi, thank you for inviting me.

Steven Cherry: The title of your paper is Development of a Valve-Based Cell Printer for the Formation of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Spheroid Aggregates. Thats certainly a mouthful, so lets take it in parts. What you did here was actually build a printer.

Will Shu: Okay, so there are two key components of the 3-D bioprinter. One is the printing nozzle, which determines what kind of materials you can print and also how much quantity of the material you can print at a particular spot, okay. So the valve-based printing nozzle we developed is basically, are solenoid microvalves, which we found is very gentle in printing stem cells, human embryonic stem cells.

So the printed human embryonic stem cells intend very high cell viability. And also, importantly, after printing out, we found the stem cells kept their key biological function, which is their potencytheir ability to be turned into any other type of cells in the body. And the other key component of the printer is basically their motion control. And similar to other types of 3-D printers, which you can print plastics [unintelligible] three-dimensional motion of the printing head, basically how well you can print, and thats quite similar to other types of 3-D printing technology.

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A 3-D Printer for Human Embryonic Stem Cells