Your Old Inkjet Printer Could Aid Burn Victims

Your Old Inkjet Printer Could Aid Burn Victims
Posted by Deren Smith on 04 Dec 2004 - 00:36 | 44 comments Forums
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?...egory=main


Looking for a place to toss your old inkjet printers? A team of
scientists working to create human tissue may have a good use for
them. Inkjets that are ten years old, they say, are perfectly suited
to create sheets of human skin and other tissue that one day may help
burn victims and even manufacture organs.

Vladimir Mironov, director of the Shared Tissue Engineering Laboratory
at the Medical University of South Carolina, is one of the scientists
who has rigged Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet printers to shoot out
proteins instead of ink, and to capture tissue on specialized gel
instead of paper. Older printers work well because their spray nozzles
have larger holes and are less likely to damage fragile cells. It
would be great to have a use for these old printers instead of
searching for a place to recycle them safely.

News source: PCWorld.com