Tag Archives: NPR Lawrence Bonassar, associate professor of
biomedical engineering at Cornell University, has been working
to solve this problem by developing a “living ink” that can be
used to 3D print the cartilage for a human ear. His research was
published in the journal PLoS One and featured on NPR. “The ear
is really remarkable from a mechanical perspective,” says
Lawrence Bonassar, an associate professor of biomedical
engineering at Cornell University who has been working with a
group to develop a better replacement ear. To make the ear,
Bonassar and his colleagues scanned the ears of his twin
daughters, who were 5 at the time. They used a 3-D printer to
build a plastic mold based on the scan. Those printers, similar
to a home inkjet, lately have also been adapted to experiment
with making chocolate, guns, and even kidneys. They then
injected a soup of collagen, living cartilage cells, and culture
medium. The soup congeals “like Jell-O,” Bonassar tells Shots.
“All this happens quickly. You inject the m