3D Printing Replacement Body Parts
Right now, if one of your body parts fails, the only option for replacement is a transplant. Enter regenerative medicine, a fledgling field with the aim of regrowing parts from a person’s own cells. Researchers in that field are now amplifying their efforts with 3D printing technology, to create scaffolds from organic materials that cells need to grow into their final forms. Richard Wysk, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at North Carolina State University, discusses the latest successes with this research, and the timeline for creating more complicated structures.