Ever put your hand on a printer and tried to make copies? Whether you have or haven’t, you know it only makes a copy of your hand onto a piece of paper.
Now, with advance technology, that printer could possibly create new skin!
By modifying an ink jet printer and growing skin cells from a patient’s body, an Army research lab has developed an amazing treatment for severe burns: printing new skin.
Once the patient’s skin cells are in a sterile ink cartridge, a computer uses a three dimensional map of the wound to guide the printing.
“The bio-printer drops each type of cell precisely where it needs to go,” explains Kyle Binder, a biomedical scientist at the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine’s Wake Forest lab. “The wound gets filled in and then those cells become new skin.”
Check out this video to learn more:
Amazing, isn’t it? For more on how the U.S. Army is advancing its’ technology everyday to help wounded Soldiers, visit http://science.dodlive.mil/.
