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That printer churns out alginate\u2014a squishy material derived from seaweed\u2014that the researchers chose both for its low cost and likeness to the material properties of human heart tissue. But instead of it extruding it into air, as a normal 3D printer might do when building something out of plastic, this extrudes the ersatz heart into a container of support gel, specifically gelatin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe analogy I have is: Imagine you were printing inside of hair gel,\u201d says Feinberg. Think of the little bubbles suspended in that bottle of gel\u2014the material is providing enough support for them to float indefinitely, or at least until you squeeze the gel out of the bottle. In this case, the gelatin offers enough give for the needle of the 3D printer to slide through. \u201cWhatever you extrude stays embedded in place, kind of like those air bubbles in hair gel,\u201d Feinberg says.<\/p>\n And now for something completely different when it comes to the art of artificial hearts: jello shots. After the organ is done printing, the researchers need a way to dissolve the gel lattice that\u2019s surrounding it, and they use a familiar method. \u201cI think a lot of people have experienced this from using gelatin in baking or making jello shots,\u201d says Feinberg. \u201cIt’s actually a liquid when you warm it up, but it becomes a solid gel when you cool it down. And so we take advantage of that.\u201d When they\u2019re ready to extract the heart, all Feinberg has to do is raise the bath to body temperature, melting away the support gel and leaving behind the 3D-printed structure.<\/p>\n Surgeons planning operations have previously made use of 3D-printed hearts based on scans of a patients\u2019 own organs. But those have been made the old-fashioned way: with hard plastic. This new alginate heart, by contrast, has a similar elasticity to real tissue. \u201cWhen you squeeze on it or push on it, it deforms the same amount, which is obviously much more than a hard rubber or plastic,\u201d says Feinberg. This makes it a much more realistic tool, allowing surgeons to, say, practice suturing, which would be impossible on impenetrable plastic.<\/p>\n In addition, the team 3D-printed a separate section of a coronary artery using the same technique to see if it would be perfusable, or capable of carrying blood. Sure enough, when they pumped in fake blood, the artery held onto the liquid without leaking. It\u2019s a step toward creating a heart with interconnected vasculature, Feinberg says. That way, surgeons could practice suturing arteries with blood still flowing.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/facfox.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Pasted-into-This-Squishy-3D-Printed-Human-Heart-Feels-Like-the-Real-Thing-4.png\")
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