Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A new technique developed by scientists at ETH Zürich in Switzerland uses 3D printers to create cartilage transplants using cells from a patient’s own body, making it possible for them to make a prosthetic nose that can grow along with the recipient.
According to CNET, the new method uses bioprinting (the process of 3D printing cartilage that was grown in a lab) as a way to minimize the amount of surgery that a transplant patient needs to undergo in order to receive an implant. Thus far, the team has used the technique to successfully create a nose and an ear out of biopolymers and cartilage cells, the website said.
Thanks to bioinks
Professor Marcy Zenobi-Wong and her colleagues at the Cartilage Engineering and Regeneration Group laboratory at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology managed the feat using a printer based on a wheel using eight syringes, each of which holds a different suspension.
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The printer is controlled using a 3D model on a computer, and the materials contained inside the syringes are deposited in layers at high speeds and with a high degree of precision. With this new technique, the ETH Zürich team is able to create a joint or nose cartilage in just 16 minutes.
“3D printing has been around for nearly 20 years. The fact that it is only just being discovered for surgical purposes is, in particular, down to the lack of bioinks,” Zenobi-Wong explained in a statement earlier this month. She and her fellow researchers use biopolymers due to the extreme national and international regulations that govern the materials used in transplants.
Seaweed nose
Since materials used in clinical procedures are must undergo years of testing before they can be used in hospitals, the Swiss research team uses biopolymers such as include alginic acid, which is extracted from seaweed and is easily tolerated by the human body, and chondroitin sulfate, a macromolecule generated by the human body that causes resistance in cartilage tissue.
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Before the process begins, the original cartilage material is obtained from the patient through a needle biopsy from a site such as a finger or knee, CNET explained. Those cells are then grown in a laboratory setting and mixed with a biopolymer to create the suspension used to print the implant. The biopolymer serves as a scaffolding that is broken down after it is implanted in the body, leaving behind only the eventually indistinguishable cartilage structure.
In addition to cosmetic procedures, the website noted that the technique could be used to replace joint cartilage, and that since the technique uses the body’s own cells, it reduces the chances that the body will reject the implant. In addition, since the prosthetic grows along with the patient’s own body, it is ideal for use in still-growing youngsters – although clinical use is still far off.
“While there’s great deal of hype around bioprinting at the moment, our research is a long way from offering things that are already being promised today.” said Zenobi-Wong. Could we soon see 3D printed hearts and kidneys? She has her doubts, adding that while cartilage is “probably the easiest bodily tissue for bioprinting… we know that this is anything but easy to print.”
After reading this, all we can think of is…
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