Inkjet printer technology doesn't get enough credit. From vendors who fill the reservoirs with edible inks and lay down photorealistic images on sheet-cakes to "Napster fabbers" who lay down successive layers of goop to make three-dimensional images, and let's not forget the doomed odorama startup that mixed perfumes in inkjet carts and vaporized them to create aroma-on-demand tech for PCs. Now, though, we have "tubes of living tissue" coming out of inkjets.
Many labs can now print arrays of DNA, proteins or even cells. But for tissue engineers, the big challenge is creating three-dimensional structures. Mironov became interested when Thomas Boland of Clemson University, also in South Carolina, told Mironov how he could print biomaterials using modified ink-jet printers.
