Lifeboat Foundation

We’re tantalizingly close to growing organs in the lab, but the biggest remaining challenge has been creating the fine networks of blood vessels required to keep them alive. Now researchers have shown that a common food dye could solve the problem.

In the US there are currently more than 100,000 people on organ transplant waiting lists. Even if you’re lucky enough to receive a replacement, you face a lifetime on immunosuppressant drugs. That’s why scientists have long dreamed of growing new organs from patients’ own cells, which could simultaneously tackle the shortage and the risk of organ rejection.

The field of tissue engineering has seen plenty of progress. Lab-grown skin has been medically available for decades, and more recently stem cells have been used to seed scaffolds—either built form synthetic materials or made by stripping cells from natural support structures—to reproduce more complex biological tissue.

Continue reading “New Progress in the Biggest Challenge With 3D Printed Organs” »

3D printing is moving ever closer to gaining a true home in mainstream commercial applications, thanks to the impact the technology is having on consumer fashion products such as jewelry, footwear, and clothing. While 3D printed fashion was still considered to be more of a novelty a few years ago, efforts have been increasing to make it more common – even in the classroom. Additionally, the technology is helping to usher in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way of manufacturing garments…and designer Julia Daviy is helping to lead the charge.

In addition to designing clothes, Daviy is also an ecologist and clean technology industry manager, and uses 3D printing to make cruelty-free, zero-waste clothing. She believes that the technology will change how the world produces clothing, especially when it comes to some of the more problematic issues of garment manufacturing, such as animal exploitation, chemical pollution, energy consumption, and material waste.

“Our goal was never to demonstrate the viability of 3D printed clothing and leave things at that. We’ll have succeeded when beautiful, comfortable, ethically manufactured and environmentally friendly clothes are the standard,” Daviy stated. “The innovations we’ve made on the production and marketing side of the equation are just as important as the technological breakthroughs that have gotten us this far.”

Continue reading “Designer Julia Daviy Introduces Her Digitally Customizable 3D Printed Skirt” »

Up-and-coming fashion designer Ganit Goldstein may not have had her 3D printed wearables on display at the recent Met Gala (where Zac Posen became the latest designer to use 3D printing in his work), but her designs are striking nonetheless. Her most recent collection, Shifted Craft, was debuted at Milan Design Week last month.

Goldstein prides herself as a fashion designer working at the intersection of craft and technology. This means she frequently combines new technologies, such as 3D scanning, modeling and printing with more traditional textile and garment-making practices. Shifted Craft, which comprises seven pieces of jewelry and two pairs of shoes, embodies these overlapping approaches seamlessly and stylishly.

Continue reading “Ganit Goldstein unveils new Japan-inspired 3D printed fashion collection” »

She wore a tech-inspired design by Zac Posen.

“One of the biggest roadblocks to generating functional tissue replacements has been our inability to print the complex vasculature that can supply nutrients to densely populated tissues,” said Jordan Miller, assistant professor at Rice University in the US.

“Further, our organs actually contain independent vascular networks — like the airways and blood vessels of the lung or the bile ducts and blood vessels in the liver,” Miller said.

“These interpenetrating networks are physically and biochemically entangled, and the architecture itself is intimately related to tissue function. Ours is the first bioprinting technology that addresses the challenge of multi vascularisation in a direct and comprehensive way,” he said.

Continue reading “3D-printed vascular networks pave way for artificial organs” »

A few years ago, a friend and fellow author Manu Saadia (author of Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek) posed a question to me about the viability of creating actual cities on other planets. It was, in his mind, one of the few things about Star Trek which seemed unrealistic, because of the fact that cities here on Earth thrive due to one important reason: imports/exports, i.e. resource exchange.

As we continue planning ahead for the future of both space travel and space colonization, the need for advanced 3D printing will ultimately dictate our ability to maintain viable civilizations on other planets.

Continue reading “3D Printing and the Viability of Interplanetary City Construction” »

This revolutionary model could have a major impact on organ donations.

The printed samples will help reveal how long-term space travel affects the human body.

The cosmos are filled with roughly Earth-sized exoplanets. Various moons, comets, and planets have stores of water, organic molecules, and amino acids like those that make up life on Earth.

Cathal O’Donnell, a 3D bioprinting researcher at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbournethose odds — he argues in The Conversation that the abundance of potentially habitable worlds out there makes the discovery of extraterrestrial life “inevitable and possibly imminent.”