How can 3D Printing save your life?
3D Printing: This technology has been the buzzword among researchers in academia and industry in the past few years. Let us know more about this term and read about a recent breakthrough related to Biomaterials.
In layman’s terms, the idea of Additive Manufacturing is adding materials layer by layer to form larger, sophisticated pieces that become parts of complex components and systems used in diverse fields of engineering and technology.
The term ‘3D printing’ is the more industrialized version of Additive Manufacturing and is used interchangeably on the commercial front.
The idea of a 3D printer is to produce components by scanning objects, converting them to CAD/CAM Models, and then control a robotic arm using code to fabricate the component by stacking them layer by layer.
The 3D Manufacturing Route is generally preferred as it can create components having complex geometrical shapes with minimal wastage. The conventional milling and lathing processes tend to waste a lot of material as they proceed in stages. The updates and corrections in designs are done simultaneously, resulting in rapid prototyping, which accelerates mass production.
Recently, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have attempted to manufacture a 3D printed full-scale human heart using an extrusion process. The process involves heating the material to melt it and force it through a die to form the required shapes.
A novel method called ‘FRESH’ (Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels) was used to give better strength and resilience to the polymer hydrogel-based model.
The initial attempts to 3D print the heart proved to be futile due to the material’s failure midway through the process. This problem was solved by suspending the flexible alginate(a gel made from seaweed tissue) part in a gelatin support structure.
An MRI scan of the patient’s heart is first taken, chopped up into horizontal sections, and scanned and translated to code for the printer to print. The printer prints the structure inside the gelatin support structure and is put in an incubator overnight, after which, when heated to 37 C, melts away the gelatin casing leaving us with the full-scale heart.
This novel method has great potential and is seen as a revolution in biomaterial manufacturing and material design. This innovation is advantageous as a heart transplant but comes with its own disadvantages due to geographical availability and biological compatibility between the donor and the receiver’s immune systems.
This method provides scope for personalization of the involved tissues and arterial networks of the heart. This, in turn, reduces the chance of error, as the doctors have an opportunity to check the compatibility of the heart and run a trial before operating. This also can be seen as a breakthrough in medical education, as surgical methods can be refined by gaining practice with FRESH Hearts, which can be cut and sewn up like real hearts.
The development of fully functional beating hearts is a long process that involves extensive research trials across various parameters, including economic viability and scope of mass production. A significant issue is the vast amount of body cells required to replicate a human heart’s functionality. During the preparation period of 4 days, many cells die, due to which the process is affected.
Despite all these, this innovation is being heralded as a significant breakthrough. It could save someone’s life in a typical headline story where beating hearts are airlifted across cities to perform surgeries. Let us keep our fingers crossed as we rest our expectations on this life-saving invention.
