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Researchers have moved a step closer to creating a synthetic liver, after a US team created a template for blood vessels to grow into, using sugar, BBC reported.

Scientists have long been experimenting with the 3D printing of cells and blood vessels, building up tissue structure layer by layer with artificial cells.

But the synthetically engineered cells often die before the tissue is formed.

The technology, in which a 3D printer uses sugar as its building material, could one day be used for transplants.

The study appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Dr Jordan Miller from the lab of the lead scientist, Dr Christopher Chen, at the University of Pennsylvania, told BBC News: "The big challenge in understanding how to grow large artificial tissue is how to keep all the cells alive in these engineered tissues, because when you put a lot of cells together, they end up taking nutrients and oxygen from neighbouring cells and end up suffocating and dying," he said.

The body's cardiovascular system - blood vessels - solves this issue with natural cells and tissues.

So a group of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided to build a synthetic vascular system that would serve the same purpose - by creating a place where the future artificial blood vessels would be located.