Oct. 13, 2014
3D printers can produce custom replacement parts for machines. Why couldn't the same process used in the medical field? Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine are proposing a new technique to image a damaged structure like a bone and construct biodegradable tissue repair structures using 3D printing to foster natural tissue growth.
iron-manganese alloy
Reseachers use 3D printed iron-manganese biodegradable scafffolds as a bone scaffold material. Iron-based alloys have high strength and ability to slowly corrode. Here Inkjet 3D printing is being used to generates complex, customizable parts from powders. The 3D printed parts maintains an "open porosity" of 36.3%, and corrodes signifcantly more rapidly than pure iron. The 3D printed scaffolds exhibited similar tensile mechanical properties to natural bones. That makes them ideal as support structures for bone growth.
In addition, reseachers also used a 3D printer to print "pre-osteoblast cells" directly onto the iron-manganese scaffolds. They found that the degraded scaffolding demonstrated good in vitro cytocompatibility compared to tissue culture plastic. And cell infiltration into the open pores of the 3D printed scaffolds was also impressed.
This project was one of 15 projects selected by America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, as part of its second call for additive manufacturing (AM) applied research and development projects. The research team, Prashant Kumta, Howard Kuhn, and Patrick Cantini concluded concluded that iron-manganese alloy is a promising material for craniofacial biomaterial applications.
The team is working with corporate partners ExOne, Magnesium Elektron and Hoeganaes on the $590,000 contract for an 18-month period.
"Additive manufacturing combines the best of technologies – the ability to construct complex structures via computer imaging utilizing a combination of advanced biocompatible and more importantly, biodegradable alloys," Dr. Kumta said.
"Thanks to computer-aided tomography, or CAT scans, we can directly image a damaged structure like a bone or trachea and construct a biodegradable iron-manganese based scaffold to promote natural tissue growth during the healing process. This reduces the risk of disease transmission via methods such as bone grafting, and allows for a more precise framework for the body to heal itself by controlling the degradability of the alloy by careful alloy design and engineering."
In addition to precise modeling of a body structure, additive manufacturing allows for the use of biodegradable alloys that serve as functional scaffolds for inducing cells to grow as well as platforms for delivering biological molecules and antibiotics, rather than as artificial implants.
"Although we could create a ceramic or plastic part with additive manufacturing, this is not as ideal as an iron-manganese alloy which is stronger, more ductile, and degrades over time to be replaced by new bone," Dr. Kuhn added.
"Additive manufacturing is a game-changer for biomedical research because it not only provides a framework structure for cells and tissue to grow providing thus a better foundation for the body to repair its own tissues, but also because it can be utilized in remote areas such as army field hospitals, where access to traditional treatments may be limited," Dr. Kumta said. "Rather than implanting an inert screw or plate or joint, we can utilize a degradable metallic alloy which provides the template allowing the body's own regenerative machinery to provide an effective pathway to heal itself."
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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