2021.03.04

Aneurysm in a Dish

Scientists operate on a 3-D-printed model of a ballooning blood vessel

An induced blood clot (red balloon) is visible in a 3-D-printed model of a brain aneurysm. / 14 Scientific American, February 2021 do not perfectly resemble those in humans. And previous lab-dish aneurysms could not mimic the properties of living blood ves- sels. “We thought maybe there could be a better way of testing those [treatment] devices,” says Lindy Jang, a biomedical engineering graduate student at Texas A&M University, who led the new study, published in Biofabrication. Jang and her colleagues 3-D-printed an aneurysm structure with a water-based gel and populated it with human cells that line the brain’s blood vessels. They then operat- ed on the aneurysm, injecting platinum © 2021 Scientific American An induced blood clot (red balloon) is visible in a 3-D-printed model of a brain aneurysm. ELISA WASSON Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

An induced blood clot (red balloon) is visible in a 3-D-printed model of a brain aneurysm. / 14 Scientific American, February 2021 do not perfectly resemble those in humans. And previous lab-dish aneurysms could not mimic the properties of living blood ves- sels. “We thought maybe there could be a better way of testing those [treatment] devices,” says Lindy Jang, a biomedical engineering graduate student at Texas A&M University, who led the new study, published in Biofabrication. Jang and her colleagues 3-D-printed an aneurysm structure with a water-based gel and populated it with human cells that line the brain’s blood vessels. They then operat- ed on the aneurysm, injecting platinum © 2021 Scientific American An induced blood clot (red balloon) is visible in a 3-D-printed model of a brain aneurysm. ELISA WASSON Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

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