Russian news outlet Izvestia reported that Oleg Kononenko, director of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, has successfully 3D printed living tissue in a microgravity environment.
Kononenko stated that this experiment opens up new prospects for space medicine. In the future, bio-printing could directly produce "patches" or even entire organs in space for repairing damaged organs—something crucial for long-duration manned space missions, including lunar and Martian exploration.
He pointed out that the bioprinter operates under zero-gravity conditions. In space, conventional tissue printing methods face significant challenges—cells and biological materials behave differently without gravity, as they do not settle under gravitational forces.
"The next step is 4D bioprinting—that is, printing objects capable of changing shape in response to external stimuli. With this technology mastered, for example, we could send compact packages into space that autonomously unfold into the required structures," he said.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1862222091036748/
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