Organ Printing Could Be a Boon for Plastics January 24, 2012 By Rachel Petkewich On November 17, 2011, surgeons at a hospital in Sweden performed the second successful transplant of an artificial organ into a human patient. Christopher Lyles, a 30 year-old U.S. citizen cancer patient, received a synthetic trachea. It was grown in a laboratory from his own stem cells so there was no rejection and he doesn't need immunosuppressive drugs. This important breakthrough for regenerative medicine could mean a new multi-million dollar market for plastics because a lot of plastics are used to grow the organs and conduct the surgery, reports Doug Smock in PlasticsToday. Smock explains that researchers at leading institutions "have been making steady progress growing a person's own stem cells on a synthetic structure, often bioresorbable, using bioreactors." The synthetic structures are called scaffolds and they are made on bioprinters, "which print out polymers in three-dimensional forms dictated by a CAD file," he writes. The cells for Lyles's trachea were grown on a scaffold inside the bioreactor for two days before the transplant. The tracheal scaffold was designed by Nanofiber Solutions in Columbus, Ohio, and Harvard Bioscience created the unique bioreactor.
Henry Fountain of The New York Times notes: In Mr. Lyle's case, and in the case of an Eritrean man who received a similar transplant last June and is doing well, the synthetic scaffold is made using CT scans of the existing trachea to ensure it matches precisely. Where do plastics come into play in the transplant process? Smocks reports that plastics are needed for the bioreactors, nanofibers for scaffolds, transplant transporters, stem cell delivery systems, surgical instruments, infusion pumps, and physiological assessment tools. In terms of dollar value, Smock cites figures from Harvard Bioscience: "The total revenue opportunity for disposables used in organ transplants is $728 million per year" and "the number of bioreactors needed for annual production [of various organs] is 26,212 at a unit price of $150,000."As for Lyles, he is back home with his family in Baltimore and will return to work at the Department of Defense when he regains his full strength, according to Fountain. Fountain spoke with Alan O. Trounson, the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, about potential complications associated with transplanting engineered tissue. Trounson "said that although rejection would not be a problem, the body responds to any foreign object, often by trying to encapsulate it. While he described [surgeon] Dr. [Paolo] Macchiarini's work as 'terrific,' he said he was not sure how long such a transplant could be expected to last."
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