The Science of Growing Body Parts

November 8, 2007

Things in Dr. Anthony Atala’s lab at Wake Forest University are not always what they seem. On one lab bench, surrounded by gutted printer cartridges, lie the inner workings of an inkjet printer. But this isn’t the scene of some document-printing job gone awry. Instead, the printer has been jury-rigged to handle something much more extraordinary than ink — it now sprays tiny living cells into the three-dimensional forms of human organs. (TIME)