Trial lawyers hate when scientists note that animals are not tiny people, so their claims PFAS which harms animals in high doses does not mean it impacts humans at all. That animals are not little people are why drugs and medical devices must survive human clinical trials. There would be 10,000 cures for cancer being sold if effectiveness in a mouse was enough.

Animal activists also hate animal trials. They will be happy about bioprinting organic tissue models that function like living organs. 

Cells instinctively know how to organize and function and the new tool mimics the body’s natural structures, giving cells the cues they need to grow, interact, and form tissues. Their collagen-based, internally perfusable scaffolds can integrate with a vascular and perfusion organ-on-a-chip reactor to form a complete tissue engineering platform, mimicking an organic cellular environment.


This 3D bioprinting method created pancreatic tissues that can sense glucose and release insulin. Credit: Daniel Shiwarski

Model diseases like diabetes and hypertension mean in-vitro, microfluidic modeling, tiny channels in a small chip to simulate blood vessel or cellular behavior. They are made from silicone and their synthetic nature has limits.

Using a custom perfusion bioreactor system, they printed scaffolds built entirely from collagen, allowing cells to interact with the model itself by growing and self-organizing into functional tissues within it. The team demonstrated this by combining the collagen with vascular and pancreatic cells, prompting insulin secretion in response to glucose, which mirrored natural physiological function. 

All models and designs from the project are freely available on University of Pittsburgh Professor Daniel Shiwarski's website.