US Students Create Working 3D Bio-Printer

‘The youth of today’ is often spoken of with a negative connotation attached to it, but for three high school students in the US it should have a glowing report of excellence stamped squarely on the front!

The students in question are, Nathan Bryant, Cameron Spicer and Thomas Worsham.  These bright young minds have created a working 3D bioprinter, which has the ability to print and grow bacteria.  This fully operational bioprinter is the conclusion of a nine-month long capstone project, which the students began as part of the LHS biotechnology class, the Loveland City School District in Ohio, U.S. announced recently.

The team transformed a 3D router system, originally designed to fashion wood, into the 3D bioprinter. Then they put live bateria cells into sugar-based gelatine like material and subsequently printed them out layer by layer to construct the 3D structure.

“In medicine what you can do is take cells from an organ if a patient needs an organ transplant and then put the patient’s cells into it and actually make an artificial organ…Ours is printing scaffolding that has bacteria in it, where they would have real human live cells and be creating very complex shapes and living structures,” explained Worsham.”

Jamie Allison, LHS biotechnology teacher said, “You don’t see this happen every day…I’ve seen something like this happen now once in my career…before I realized it, I had tears running down my face,” Allison said. “We brought the AP Bio teacher down – she was teary on the spot. I hope I get to see it again, but if I don’t, I know that I was in a school where I had students that were prepared enough by the district, and then I just gave them the push and a few other skills to do something like this. If this is what my career ends like, I’m OK… I’m fine with that.”

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[Images via lovelandschools & textually]

SOURCE: http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140314-three-ohio-high-school-students-create-working-3d-bioprinter.html