Booklet

Like printing with different colours, placing different types of cells in the ink cartridges should make it possible to recreate complex structures consisting of multiple cell types. “I think this is extremely exciting technology that has the potential to overcome some of the major obstacles [to tissue engineering] we have seen in the past,” says leading tissue engineer Anthony Atala of Harvard Medical School in Boston..

Biologists have long known that bits of tissue placed next to each other can fuse. The researchers found that as long as the layers were thin enough for the clumps to come into contact with each other, the bits of tissue fused. Once a structure is complete, the gel is easily removed. Details of the team's initial work will soon be published.