A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials
with several of the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists
have demonstrated.
The new type of material consists of thousands of connected
water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the
functions of the cells inside our bodies. These printed 'droplet networks'
could be the building blocks of a new kind of technology for delivering drugs
to places where they are needed and potentially one day replacing or
interfacing with damaged human tissues. Because droplet networks are entirely
synthetic, have no genome and do not replicate, they avoid some of the problems
associated with other approaches to creating artificial tissues – such as those
that use stem cells. The team report their findings in this week's Science.
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