Dive Brief:
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Although the construction of complex networks of capillaries has posed a problem, limiting the ability to support and maintain artificial organs, that may not be the case for long.
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Assistant professor of mechanical engineering Leon Bellan of Vanderbilt discovered that a cheap cotton candy machine poses an ideal solution because it can spin threads roughly a tenth the diameter of a human hair, about the same as capillaries. The research article was published in the Advanced Healthcare Materials Journal last week and reported by Forbes.
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Bellan says he hopes to create a basic ‘toolbox’ for other researchers to use the low-tech solution to create artificial vasculature that can support artificial livers, kidneys, bone, and more.
Dive Insight:
The discovery could have a wide impact not only on the cost of such biotech, but on advancing the feasibility of artifical organ use. The availability of 3D microfiber networks would allow artificially constructed or lab-grown organs to be sustained longer before transplants. According to Bellan's team, they have already succeeded at keeping living cells viable for a week outside the body.
"We’ve shown we can use this simple technique to make microfluidic networks that mimic the three-dimensional capillary system in the human body in a cell-friendly fashion," Bellan told Forbes."Generally, it’s not that difficult to make two-dimensional networks, but adding the third dimension is much harder; with this approach, we can make our system as three-dimensional as we like."