Bioprinting crossed a new frontier last week when scientists at Northwestern University revealed a successful effort to implant a 3D printed ovary into infertile mice — and several of those mice gave birth to healthy pups.
This research, believed to be the first time that artificial ovaries have been 3D printed, is a step toward a replacement ovary for humans that “restores long-term hormone function and fertility” for women and girls who have undergone treatment for cancer or other diseases, the research team wrote in Nature Communications.
“The goal of this project is to be able to restore fertility and endocrine health to young cancer patients who have been sterilized by their cancer treatments,” Teresa Woodruff, the director of the Women’s Health Research Institute at Northwestern’s medical school, says. “Right now, we’re able to do that with young mice.”
To create the bioprosthetic ovaries, researchers printed a latticelike scaffold made out of gelatin on an EnvisionTEC 3D-Bioplotter. They filled some of the empty spaces in the scaffold with tissue from real mouse ovaries that contains immature egg cells, then implanted these egg-encrusted scaffolds into mice. In a matter of days, the artificial ovaries hooked up to the circulatory system, and three of the seven mice in the experiment were able to mate with male mice and produce healthy offspring.
The biomedical engineers tested several scaffold geometries to figure out which structures would give the best chance of making the mice fertile again. This research has implications not only for ovaries but for “other soft organ and tissue engineering applications, because we the have ability to 3D print basically any architecture that we think will be optimal for different cell types.” Dr. Ramille Shah, an assistant professor at Northwestern’s engineering school, says.
Mary Zelinski, a reproductive scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center who was not on the research team, told Science that this study represented a “significant advance in the application of bioengineering to reproductive tissues.”
“To create organ structures that function and restore the health of that tissue for that person,” says Woodruff, ”is the holy grail of bioengineering for regenerative medicine.”