Medical science could change forever thanks to a “special” inkjet-printer as a Japanese professor says that his machine could generate human organs. Makoto Nakamura from the Toyama University, Japan claims that the technology is very simple and it works just like a conventional inkjet printer, but instead of jetting out ink droplets, the machine will jet out hundreds, maybe thousands of cells per second.

The professor from Toyama city is not sure that the inkjet printer-like machine can produce human organs, but it’s worth trying as the preliminary tests were encouraging.

“It would be like building a huge skyscraper on a micro level using different kinds of cells and other materials instead of steel beams, concrete and glass,” said Nakamura. “Ultimately I hope to make a heart.”

Nakamura is aware that developing a heart could take him about 20 years, but he is also very confident that this technology could lead to producing good hearts for people in need of heart transplants. The advantage of this inkjet-like technique is that the heart will be produced with cells coming from the patient therefore the body will not reject it.

The organ printing technique should be world’s finest printed 3D structure, as Nakamura likes to say. The technology is also compared to slicing a fruit as the organ will be cut horizontally and the researchers will observe the pattern of the cells.

The machine that will produce organs will have to drop cells in the “right spots” and will have to do it for many layer so that we can have a 3D organ. It should act just like an inkjet printer which drops ink in different colors and in various positions, therefore the “special” machine should drop cells just like that.

In the preliminary tests, Nakamura managed to create living cells in a tube which measure 0.04-inch in diameter. The tube is based on double walls with two types of cells which is very similar with the blood-vessels of a human.

The professor also managed to generate a single-wall tube which measures one tenth of a millimeter which is the same as a human hair. Both of these tubes were created with a 3D inkjet bio-printer which was designed by Nakamura and his team at the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology. It took them three years to complete, and now the 3D bio-printer can jet out cells at an accuracy of one-thousandth of a millimeter and the machine can generate a tube with a speed of 1.2-inch per 2 minutes.

Before becoming a researcher, Nakamura was a pediatrician and he was treating kids with heart diseases, and there were children who didn’t respond to treatment so he “just had to watch them die.” He couldn’t do anything as “clinical doctors can’t give them treatment that isn’t in textbooks. I clung to the hope that medicine will make progress and save more lives in the future.” Then he decided to do something and he started to contribute to the progress of medical science.

Some people suggested Nakamura to print brains and to try to create a new life, but he rejected this idea as he is “not envisioning making superhuman cyborgs. There are simply lives that could be saved if there are organ.”

Nakamura also tried to develop artificial hearts, however, he realized that it wouldn’t work as mechanical organs can’t generate energy, hormones, or to fight against infections by themselves. The idea of a 3D bio-printer popped-up in his mind when he found out that the ink droplets of an inkjet printer are the same size cells therefore he bought a printer and he tried to jet out human cells. However, it didn’t work so he decided to continue with his research.

Eventually, the researcher managed to create a 3D structure which supported living human cells. He did it in 2003 and he was one of the first to do that. His technique consisted of puting the human cells in alginate sodium and then to jet them in a calcium chloride solution that prevented them from drying out.

“I really don’t know what the future possibilities are, but this technology will be needed in the future to find where to position stem cells,” concluded Nakamura.

Well, it remains to see if he will be able to pull it off and to print hearts for people with serious heart conditions.