(Medical Xpress)—Organovo Holdings, Inc., a company that designs and creates functional human tissue has announced at this year's Experimental Biology Conference that it has developed a 3D printing technique that is able to produce small samples of human liver tissue. They claim their new process allows for printing 500 micron thick liver tissue, amounting to 20 cell layers, which is able to produce cholesterol and some of the enzymes produced by the natural liver. The liver samples produced, the company said, can be used by researchers looking to test the efficacy of new drugs designed to treat liver diseases or to test side effects on the liver of drugs created for other purposes.
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