Spanish scientists create a 3D bioprinter to print human skin | Hacker News Reader

Spanish scientists create a 3D bioprinter to print human skin

sciencebulletin.org

172 pointsdevinp18 comments

Hopefully this new process's product can help alleviate some of the issues faced by burn victims.

When I was a small child I was run over by a car and severely burned (by the catalytic converter). I had to have multiple skin grafts, one fairly large.

At the time (1987), a temporary measure was to graft pig's skin over the burn. This is apparently still done today, but this new process's product (and others) could conceivably be used instead.

After the temporary graft I got autografts, which involves cutting skin off an un-burned area and applying it to a burned area. This was pretty painful†, and I wound up with a bad infection on the donor site.

The grafts have been fine ever since, but they're pretty unsightly (thankfully my clothes cover them). I also have the scar from the donor site (worsened by the infection). The artificial skin produced by these new printers will hopefully prevent some of these issues.

† I have memories of hurting from this, but I was only 1.5 years old, so I'm not sure if they're really memories or interpolations of things I've been told.

The CIEMAT scientists then took an oath that they would never graft the skin onto a robotic endoskeleton for the purpose of infiltrating human resistance groups. Watching from the printer control workstation, Cortana remained silent.

Nobody in the room could bring themselves to mention the other reason why there was demand for robots with real human skin.

It's sex bots... isn't it?

Have you seen the new Cortana? Damn!

Cool. Does that mean you can print fingerprints with this tech? Might come in handy in the dystopian world we are headed into.

Being able to leave fingerprints of a high value target at a crime scene could really make things interesting from a lot of perspectives.

eg: providing false alibi's, setup/framing, coercion/bribery

When (if?) that actually starts to happen, law enforcement could get a whole lot trickier. :/

Interesting! Reminds me of "The Unreconstructed M" By Philip K. Dick. https://www.jerkersearcher.com/sffaudio_pdfs/TheUnreconstruc...

One step closer to Westworld

This looks amazing, but it's a bit vague. While it may be satisfactory as "functional" skin, does it have nerves?

There are no nerves in the epidermis.

It says in the article that they also replicate the dermis.

Although I'm no expert, it seems to me that the dermis does have nerves: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Skin_lay...

I stand corrected.

Full thickness skin grafts become sensate so they don't have to have nerves, as long as the underlying tissue isn't cooked too badly nerves and other autonomic functions will grow into it. (Well, its very interesting to think if they have been able to replicate the entire dermis... there are lots of components and I would think that this may probably only be able to replicate the most important components, later we will learn how to integrate the other bits)

I m hoping that in some point in the future we will be able to print directly on the body to repair damage .

I suffer from Keratoconus and the only actual solution is corneal transplantation; I would be wonderful to be able to grow the cornea in situ. Bio-startup idea anyone?

I imagine some years from now a high demand for this by tattoo removal clinics.

Maybe they can print a nice thick amount for our new President. He seems to be in need of it.

Nothing like political jabs to highlight the hypocrisy of YC. Where are the comments decrying how this sort of comment is not what this community is about? Where's @dang with his boilerplate lecture?

IDK, the fact that we are all sitting here, light grey at the bottom of the page is a pretty good sign the system is working.

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