An anonymous reader cites a report in Popular Science magazine. As detailed in a new issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new 3D printing approach to create cultures that grow and function like brain tissue. Instead of his traditional 3D printing, which requires stacking the “bioink” vertically like a cake, the team told the machine to print horizontally, like falling dominoes. As New Atlas explains, researchers created neurons grown from pluripotent stem cells (stem cells that can become multiple different cell types) with fibrinogen and thrombin, biomaterials involved in blood clotting. and placed in a new bioink gel. Next, adding other hydrogels loosened the bioink and helped solve his three problems encountered during previous 3D printing tissue experiments. The resulting tissue is not only resilient enough to maintain structure, but also has the right level of elasticity for neurons, said lead researcher Su-chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is also malleable enough to take in oxygen and nutrients. “This tissue still has enough structure to bond, but is soft enough that neurons can grow into each other and start talking to each other,” Zhang explained in a recent university profile. I am.
Because the new tissue cells were horizontally structured, they formed connections not only within each layer but across the layers, similar to human neurons. The new structures were able to interact thanks to the production of neurotransmitters and even create supporting cell networks within the 3D printed tissue. In these experiments, the researchers printed cultures of both the cerebral cortex and striatum. Although responsible for very different functions, the former is associated with thinking, language, and voluntary movement. The latter is tied to visual information, and 3D-printed he two organizations can still communicate “in a very specific and specific way,” Zhang said. The researchers believe that their technique is not limited to creating just these two types of cultures, but could hypothetically “create almost any type of neuron.” [sic] This means that 3D printing methods could ultimately be used to study how healthy parts of the brain interact with parts affected by Alzheimer's disease, investigate cellular signaling pathways in Down syndrome, and to This means it could be used to test new drugs. “Our brains work in networks. Cells don't work alone, so we want to print brain tissue in this way,” Zhang explained. they talk to each other. This is how our brains work, and to truly understand it, we need to study them together like this. ”