3D printing has revolutionized our world,
providing endless opportunities from printing homes, to modeling organs.
And now, scientists are tackling the challenge of incorporating living cells into bone-like structures using a new ceramic ink.
This could one day allow surgeons to repair damaged bones by applying ink directly into the injury.
Bones are capable of self-healing.
But sometimes, the damage is so severe, the body is unable to repair itself.
This can happen in cases of severe trauma or an illness, like cancer, where a large area of bone tissue is missing
or needs to be removed.
Currently, the go-to choice for major bone repair is a graft.
But high risks of infection or immune rejection
has led bioengineers to explore the creation of artificial bone.
Engineers have tested synthetic materials like metals, thermoplastics, and bioceramics,
trying to get synthetic bones just right.
And for the last decade or so, they’ve even tried 3D printing them.
One reason it’s so difficult to print artificial bones is its hybrid nature.
In addition to bone’s mineralized weight-bearing structure, bone is also alive!
It has living tissue that allows it to compress and bend without breaking
and this level of complexity can be hard to replicate.
Until now, if you needed a 3D printed bone it had to be premade in a lab somewhere,
and the process involved using either high-temperature furnaces or toxic materials.
Any living cells have to be added after the bone was printed.
It’s a slow and imperfect process that, depending on the complexity and size of the bone you need,
could take several days or even weeks.
That’s a long time to wait if you need a bone.
And even once the artificial bone is implanted, things could still go wrong.
It could be slow to heal or even collapse.
What’s cool about this new 3D printing technique is it eliminates the toxic chemicals and extreme heat
by printing at room temperature with a unique new ink...
on demand and with live cells ready to grow.
It’s called Ceramic Omnidirectional Bioprinting In Cell-Suspensions.
It uses a ceramic-based ink made of calcium phosphate, the main mineral found in human bones and teeth,
to produce bone-like structures that can set in minutes.
The ink is extruded into a gelatin support bath that contains living cells.
The ink “sets” through this clever little trick.
When it comes in contact with water in the gelatin bath,
the ceramic ink transforms into crystal nanostructures similar to the building blocks of actual bones.
The living cells form colonies around the ink, where they grow into a network of tissues.
This closely mimics ossification, the natural process that creates new bone in the body.
The team has already printed delicate bone structures up to about half a centimeter cubed,
and after 14 days, more than 95% of the cells survived.
In a clinical setting, the ink would solidify in bodily fluid
and print bone-like structure that already contains the patient’s own living cells.
With advances in hand-held printing, it may one day be possible to repair immobilized patients on site.
Of course, we’re in the early days of this whole process and we still need to see if COBICS-printed bones
continue their cell growth once they’ve been placed inside existing bone tissue.
This hasn’t stopped surgeons and medical tech manufacturers from expressing interest in the technique.
The team is currently working on re-designing the support bath to print larger samples.
So perhaps in the not so distant future, it will be a little easier to repair bones that won’t heal all by themselves.
And that’s something worth looking forward to.
So in the future repairing bones will be a snap.
And that’s not the only part of you that might be printed in the future.
Check out this video on the first full-size 3D print of a human heart.
If you have any 3D printing breakthroughs you think we should cover,
let us know in the comments below and as always, thanks for watching Seeker.