“Will we be able to 3D print an entire human being soon?”

Three-dimensional (3D) printing, is the major innovation in many areas, such as engineering, manufacturing, art, education and medicine. In the medical fields, 3D bio-printing is one of the hot issues in the latest developments of 'personalized medicine'. The technology could help doctors to tailor treatments to individual patients, rather than developing a treatment that works well for most patients with that condition. Some scientists and companies successfully print tissue and plant it into the patient’s bodies. For example Organovo was able to print a liver organ in 2013., researchers at Princeton University created a functional ear using a modified $1,000 ink-jet printer in the same year (Mannoor, Jiang et al. 2013), and TeVido BioDevices was in the early-stages of using 3D bioprinting of live cells to build custom implants and grafts for breast cancer survivors in 2014. Seeing this condition, one thing will come to our mind for sure, what will be the next step. Will 3D technology be able to create an entire human being very soon? As Will.i.am (a musician and entrepreneur for a 3D company) said to the Dezeen magazine on March 6 2015 in the launching of his new firm, ‘Eventually 3D printing will print people’. Even though some scientists and entrepreneurs in the medical field have the same prediction as Will.i.am, my opinion is if it’s possible, it is still far off. There are three big challenges which mean this dream will not be realised soon.

The first reason is printing an organ (a liver, a heart, kidney, etc.) or tissue (skin, breast) is one thing, but printing an entire body is another. Basically, in the bioprinting process, they take the cell from the body patient itself to reduce the immunity rejection during the transplantation. After that, they culture the cell until certain point. By using these cells, they create the “bio-ink”. Then, the bio-ink is loaded into a bioprinter along with a cartridge of hydrogel, a kind of synthetic matrix effectively used as a kind of scaffolding for building 3D layers of cells (Murphy and Atala 2014). For example, in case of printing only the blood vessels in heart, you will need 50 ccs of fats and collagens cell. To culture this amount volume of cell is difficult and extremely costly said a synthetic biology researcher Christina Agapakis. The whole picture of the human body in an anatomy book shows how complicated organs, tissues are. It means they not only need to find a way to grow enough material for the bio-ink but also need to map it all out correctly. With how far computer modelling has come, though, it’s not hard to imagine that they will eventually be able to map out the entire human body. They have mapped the entire human genome (2001) and found ways of using lasers to scan 3D images of people, and even fully simulated parts of the brain in blue brain project (Markram 2006). However the rebuilt map of entire human being will not be an easy project. For example in the average human brain, there are 100 billion neurons, and 100 trillion synapses. Being able to print that many neurons and connect them all in the right way is going to be extremely difficult.

The second issue is where the money will come from for realizing this project.

"If you 3D print a dress, or a gun, it is pretty easy to tell right away if it works. The assays to tell whether bioprinting can work are really, really time consuming and expensive." (Aura Bosworth, CEO and co-founder of TeVido)

As mentioned earlier, the Organovo has been able to print sets of liver tissues where each set consists of a plate with 24 wells containing a piece of liver tissue 3mm square and 0.5mm deep. A set of tissues costs around $2,000 or more for laboratory use. Another example, TeVido has spent million dollars for testing its breast tissue on mice through a National Science Foundation grant, and it will need about seven years before getting to human trials. They still need $40m to get her the technology to the market. Might May be there are some possibilities, when some company plans, venture capitalists, or other potential partners merge together to raise the funding. However, the next problem that all is the cost and expenditure will not get us.

Even though we can solve the first and second challenges, other challenge rising that arises is soon is an inherent ethical dilemma with the realization of 3D printing an entire human. Two basic ethical issues are the safety and effective treatment and idea of enhanced capacity of individuals beyond what is 'normal' for humans. For 3D printing replacing bones, they generally where Titanium oxide is often used. The safety and effectiveness of these materials, which are commonly used in the orthopedic surgery, were examined over long periods. Even though the idea of bioprinting, using the patient's own cells, are still not clear to ensure safety of this treatment. This means that even if researchers were ready to print a functioning prosthetic organ, it will be quite some time before patients with kidney diseases should expect to be offered a 3D printed prosthetic kidney that uses their stem cells as a routine treatment. Other issues are the ideas about human enhancement. This issue is familiar to the context of elite sport where athletes have sought to use medical technology to extend their speed, strength or endurance beyond what is 'natural', or what they are able to achieve without drugs or supplements. It will be possible for athletes to use the technology to strengthen their bones or muscles to enhance their performance . Meanwhile, it is clear that this technology would be preferable for military personnel to be less exposed to physical harm. The idea of 3D printing could lead to a new kind of arms race. Increasing the defences that soldiers have in the face of battle would lead to an increasing the destructive power of weapons to overcome those defences. And in so doing, there will be an increasing harmful to civilians. In this way 3D printing may open up a new gap in the capability of "enhanced" and normal human.

Even though some scientists and entrepreneurs in the medical field predict that 3D bio-printing can create entire human beings in our lifetime, my opinion is if it all possible, it is still far away because of some big challenges. So rather than thinking of printing entire human beings, scientist should use this technology to build "body on a chip," the system has the potential to speed up the development of new drugs because it could potentially replace testing in animals, which can be slow, expensive and not always accurate.

Reference:

(2001). "A physical map of the human genome." Nature 409(6822): 934-941.

Mannoor, M. S., Z. Jiang, et al. (2013). "3D Printed Bionic Ears." Nano Letters 13(6): 2634-2639.

Markram, H. (2006). "The Blue Brain Project." Nat Rev Neurosci 7(2): 153-160.