A group of 3D printing companies rallied Tuesday on news of a medical breakthrough in “bio-printing” artificial vascular networks.

A team of U.S. and Australian scientists successfully printed the networks and embedded them in various forms of hydrogels to simulate the human body.

Results of the project were published May 6 in the journal Lab On A Chip and reported at the time in several major U.S. media outlets.

But a number of trade articles appeared on the development Tuesday, including Engineering.com, VentureBeat and Techcrunch.

Project scientists have said the technology has far to go before it's practical for use in humans. The strategy, however, "represents an effective technique" with potentially useful applications in tissue engineering and organs on a chip, according to an abstract of the research results.

Voxeljet AG (NYSE: VJET) soared nearly 22 percent to $25.52

ExOne (NASDAQ: XONE) popped 17 percent to $46.36

3D Systems (NYSE: DDD) rose 10 percent to $66.01

Stratasys Ltd. (NASDAQ: SSYS) gained nearly eight percent to $122.47

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