Oct 13, 2015 | By Benedict
OCTE (Organs, Cell, and Tissue Engineering) Technologies, the company responsible for India’s first 3D printed heart replica, are planning to capitalise on their early success and take their 3D printing technology to the next level.
The Indian biotechnology startup provides healthcare solutions using 3D printing technology. Its aim is to revolutionise the Indian healthcare market by continuing its development and production of pre-operative surgical models, such as the one used to save 11-month old Lavesh Navedkar earlier this year. “We have only been motivated to do more and more ever since,” explained OCTE researcher Firoza Kothari regarding Lavesh’s surgery. “We have seen how impactful 3D printing technology can be when it comes to saving lives or bringing improvements to the quality of life with the help of these anatomical models. And this is just the beginning. All we want to do now is take it to the next level.”
In addition to surgical models, which are designed using FDA and CE approved software, OCTE are developing patient-specific prosthetics and implantable medical devices. “3D printing prosthetics reduces the costs to a great extent and hence, allows us to provide different functional features to the part and at the same time make it look very appealing visually. This helps boost the patient’s self-confidence and provides for a better social and psychological experience,” explained OCTE’s Samkit Shah.
“3D printed titanium implants have proved to be a boon as they allow for improvements at the most intrinsic level and provide doctors the ability to control the design without worrying about the limitations of fabrication. The possibilities of combining titanium implants with biologics is highly interesting”, added Sagar Shah.
The company are also looking even further into the future of 3D printing technology. Inspired by developments in bio-printing, OCTE firmly believe in the potential of creating physiologically relevant tissue models, to be used in pre-clinical drug testing. A medical landscape in which tissue models could be used to test pharmaceuticals could potentially eliminate much of the need to testing on animals, which would potentially reduce costs as well as pleasing the animal rights community. The company are even hopeful of one day creating biological structures which could be used as human implants, with the possibility of 3D-printed functional organs a real possibility.
“What fascinates me most about the capabilities of 3D printing is Bioprinting,” said OCTE’s Sohrab Kothari. “Knowing that there awaits a future wherein we can completely control and organize live cellular structures to obtain patient specific tissues or organs for transplant sure provides a lot of hope. We will be able to address so many concerns related to rejections and increase survival rate.”
Dr. Ajaykumar Vishwakarma, Scientific founder of OCTE Technologies Pvt. Ltd and post-doctoral researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School & Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, explains the startup’s ultimate intentions: “The goal is to develop therapeutic and non-therapeutic technology and process breakthroughs at the interface of materials engineering and medicine… 3D printing is a powerful tool! Its future value proposition largely depends on how we use it to solve medical problems and that’s precisely what OCTE technologies is all about! We want to achieve its full translational potential from bench to bedside focusing on application based disruptive innovations.”
OCTE was co-founded by the entrepreneurs who ventured Sahas Softech LLP, a 3D printing firm who specialise in architecture, jewellery and engineering solutions. OCTE was previously the healthcare division of Sahas Softech. The company is due to launch at the 3D Printing World Expo 2015 at Nehru Center in Mumbai.
Process of generation of an anatomical 3D print
Step 1: Segmentation of Region Of Interest on 2D slices of an MRI/CT Scan
Step 2: Generation of a 3D CAD model (Image: tumor in the gangliocapsular region)
Step 3: Life size 3D print of the tumor and the lateral ventricle of the brain.
Other Examples:
Cross Sections of a DORV heart (Lavesh Navedkar)
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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