Will printed 3D organs be part of the future? Advanced Solutions thinks so

Advanced Solutions says it is moving ever closer to developing software to print 3D human organs.

The US-based company’s BioAssembly Bot is built to produce biomedical materials and to develop vascular structures outside of the human body.

It uses Tissue Structure Information Modeling, software that gives operators the ability to design tissue structure so that it can be replicated by the BioAssembly Bot.

The ultimate aim is to produce functioning human organs, says Advanced Solutions’ President and CEO Michael Golway.

“That is certainly our goal. We have quite a bit to do in that area but certainly the tools we’ve invented, like the BioAssembly Bot, are enabling our scientists to advance the biology in ways that have never been possible before and that’s very exciting,” he told CNBC.

“We can print liver cells in a structure the size of a U.S. quarter and combine it with our vascularization technology in a 3D structure to get results that begin to mimic a functioning liver.

“We have a model where we have to fail faster. Our objective, certainly from the engineering side, is to bring the market tools that allow the researchers, the biologists and the scientists to fail faster so they can move the biology forward.”

Golway believes the fruits of his company’s research could be seen in around five years, though he admits there are ethical issues to consider.

"We believe in the next five years, you'll start to see movement from the research side to the clinical side, where we're starting to develop functional solutions for the patient,” he added.

"I can only expect that there will be a lot of debate and discussion around the ethics, and I have great confidence that once we go to the clinical side, it will be a safe application for patients."