Gabor Forgacs, the George H. Vineyard Professor of Physics in the University of Missouri-Columbia, has been working to refine the process of “printing” tissue structures of complex shape with the aim of eventually building human organs.

In the latest study, a research team led by Forgacs determined that the process of building such structures by printing does not harm the properties of the composing cells and the process mimics the naturally occurring biological assembly of living tissues.

The team used bio-ink particles, or spheres containing 10,000 to 40,000 cells, and assembled, or “printed,” them on to sheets of organic, cell friendly “bio-paper.” Once printed, the spheres began to fuse in the bio-paper into one structure, much the same way that drops of water will fuse to form a larger drop of water.

Through this bio-printing process, they were able to build, for the first time, functional tissue structures.