Human hearts printed on your ink jet

JAPANESE boffins have been working on a printer that can " print out" new human hearts using simple inkjet technology.

Professor Makoto Nakamura has managed to get his printer to jet out cells but one day wants to print out thousands of cells per second and to build them up into a three-dimensional organ.

The professor from the graduate school of science and technology for research at the state-run University of Toyama said one day he wants to print off a heart.

We guess it depends if he has enough red in his cartridge. We are always running out of red, it must be all those complaints we send ou.

He said it will take him 20 years to develop a heart and when he does he could mass produce "good hearts" for patients waiting for transplants.

If the heart made of cells originating from the patient could eliminate fears that the body would reject them.

Prof Nakamura has already succeeded in building a tube with living cells as narrow as narrow as human hair. Which we would have thought would mean he could transplant hair.

He said that he was motivated to build his cell printing machine because he was fed up with watching children with heart problems dying.

Prof Nakamura draws the idea of printing brains or trying to create new life, even though he could eventually knock out a cyborg girl with large breasts on his inkjet.

Prof Nakamura had a break through when he discovered that droplets from inkjet printers were about the same size as human cells.

He borrowed a Seiko Epson printer from work in 2002 and tried to eject cells with it, but the inkjet nozzle got clogged.

When he rang the company's customer service the woman on the end of the blower had no idea what to do when you get organic matter clogged in your nozzles.

After a few tries he eventually reached an Epson official who showed interest and agreed to give him technical support.

It took him a year to get the cells to survive the printing process and a couple of years to raise enough money to buy printer cartridges. µ

L'Inq AP