PhD: (also known as a doctorate) A type of advanced degree offered by universities — typically after five or six years of study — for work that creates new knowledge. People qualify to begin this type of graduate study only after having first completed a college degree (a program that typically takes four years of study).

In the future, such synthetic vessels could be used as part of lab-made organs to save the lives of people urgently awaiting donated organs for transplant.

The idea was actually inspired by the ice magic in a Disney movie, says Burak Ozdoganlar. He’s a mechanical engineer who’s leading the new vessel-building project at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Executive Protectionsalary

ultraviolet light: A type of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nanometers to 380 nanometers. The wavelengths are shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays.

“It’s like using Play-Doh,” Yang says. “The ice is like the mold. And Play-Doh will be whatever material [here, the gelatin] that you make the channels into.”

Executive protectionrequirements

Printing the ice template is simple. First, engineers program its shape into a 3-D printer. The printer then drops water onto a very cold surface, where it freezes instantly. How cold? Try -35° Celsius (-31° Fahrenheit). The printer repeats this process until the vessel’s shape is complete. In all, it takes less than 30 seconds.

The new research is “quite interesting … and exciting,” says Warren Grayson. But it also has limitations, he adds. Grayson is a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. He works on similar projects but did not take part in this research.

Such vessels could one day help create lab-grown organs. But blood vessels are very delicate and have been hard to make outside the body. If the new method works, it could help support lab-made organs or ways to test new medicines. One day, artificial vessels might even replace damaged ones in people with cardiovascular disease.

Executive Protectionservices

engineer: A person who uses science and math to solve problems. As a verb, to engineer means to design a device, material or process that will solve some problem or unmet need.

field: An area of study, as in: Her field of research is biology. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.

organ: (in biology) Various parts of an organism that perform one or more particular functions. For instance, an ovary is an organ that makes eggs, the brain is an organ that makes sense of nerve signals and a plant’s roots are organs that take in nutrients and moisture.

Founded in 2003, Science News Explores is a free, award-winning online publication dedicated to providing age-appropriate science news to learners, parents and educators. The publication, as well as Science News magazine, are published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education.

nutrient: A vitamin, mineral, fat, carbohydrate or protein that a plant, animal or other organism requires as part of its food in order to survive.

Executive protectionCanada

In the ice-vessel project, he notes, “you can see that all these structures are pretty small.” Their size is limited by the very cold temperatures used, he says. Larger structures would not stay cold enough as a result of heat transfer.

So far, the Carnegie Mellon team has tested its gel channels with endothelial (En-doh-THEE-lee-ul) cells. These are the cells that line the inner walls of blood vessels.

mechanical engineer: Someone trained in a research field that uses physics to study motion and the properties of materials to design, build and/or test devices.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say [the new work] will transform the field of tissue engineering,” Grayson says. “But it does provide another dimension that you can use to create structures.”

Executive Protectiontraining

cell: (in biology) The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells.

In one experiment, those cells survived two weeks lining the artificial vessels. This is promising, but there is still a long way to go before such replacement vessels could be transplanted into people.

Meeting: F. Yang et al. 3D freeform ice printing for fabricating biomimetic vascular networks in engineered tissue. 68th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, Pa. February 13, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2023.11.2648.

cardiovascular: An adjective that refers to things that affect or are part of the heart and the system of vessels and arteries that move blood through the heart and tissues of the body.

This is one in a series presenting news on technology and innovation, made possible with generous support from the Lemelson Foundation.

Executive protectionagent

Think about “how Elsa makes the ice castle,” says Feimo Yang. “She just waved her hand and made the [huge] castle.” Of course, the reality is much different. For one, “we need this huge machine to make a tiny, little castle,” he says. Yang, a PhD student, works with Ozdoganlar.

development: (in biology) The growth of an organism from conception through adulthood, often undergoing changes in chemistry, size and sometimes even shape.  (in engineering) The growth or change of something from an idea to a prototype.

Ice seemed like a good alternative for many reasons. It costs little and is readily available. And since it’s non-toxic, the body won’t reject it.

Superhighways of vessels beneath our skin transport blood and nutrients. These natural pathways branch out like tree limbs to help our body move food and oxygen to our organs. Our bodies make vessels naturally, but bioengineers also want to make them artificially. And now a team of engineers has found a cool new way to do that in the lab: They use ice.

tissue: Made of cells, it is any of the distinct types of materials that make up animals, plants or fungi. Cells within a tissue work as a unit to perform a particular function in living organisms. Different organs of the human body, for instance, often are made from many different types of tissues.

Journal: A. Garg et al. Freeform 3D ice printing (3D‐Ice) at the micro scale. Advanced Science. Vol. 9, September 23, 2022, 2201566. doi: 10.1002/advs.202201566.

Executive Protectionjobs

Executive protectionmanagement pdf

Vessels carry oxygen-rich red blood cells to tissues throughout the body, as in this artist’s representation. Researchers hope to make artificial organs but need synthetic vessels to support them. In the new work, ice serves as a template for these lab-made vessels.

To make the vessels, the engineers first needed a template or mold from which to build the tissue. “Originally, we were trying to do this with wax,” Ozdoganlar says. But wax proved “too soft,” he says. “And it’s not necessarily biocompatible,” or suitable for use in the body. Then they thought of Elsa’s magic.

This icy vessel template is then encased in gelatin. Shining ultraviolet light on the gelatin hardens it as the ice melts away. What’s left are realistic-looking channels for blood to move through.

tissue engineering: A field of research that works to turn cells and other biologically active molecules into living, working tissues. Much of its use has focused in medicine with the goal of creating new tissues to replace or repair damaged ones, sometimes including whole organs. Examples include artificial skin and cartilage.

Yang described his team’s work on February 13 at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pa. Some of the work was also published in Advanced Science.

3-D: Short for three-dimensional. This term is an adjective for something that has features that can be described in three dimensions — height, width and length.

transplant: (in medicine) The replacement of organs, tissues or cells with those from another organism. It is also a term for the material that will be moved.

“There is a push … to have better models of diseases and tissues to use in drug development,” Ozdoganlar says. The new vessels might be tested with a drug being developed for use in people. Such tests might even use artificial blood vessels seeded with some of your own cells. This could show how your body might react to the drug.