News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
While we often talk about bioinks and hydrogel materials for 3D bioprinting applications, a group of engineers from the University of Illinois have developed a new (and sweet!) material and 3D printer system which could have important applications in biomedical engineering, cancer research and device manufacturing.
A UCLA bioengineer has developed a technique that uses a specially adapted 3D printer to build therapeutic biomaterials from multiple materials. The advance could be a step toward on-demand printing of complex artificial tissues for use in transplants and other surgeries.
Canadian biotechnology company Aspect Biosystems has received a $1 million investment from Genome BC, a Vancouver-based non-profit dedicated to genomics innovation. The funding will go towards advancing and further commercializing Aspect Biosystems’ 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering platform.
While we’ve always known turmeric to be a versatile spice—it’s great in curries and lattes!—we didn’t realize just how multi-use it could be. Now, however, thanks to a research initiative coming out of Washington State University (WSU), the benefits of using turmeric in the production of 3D printed ceramic bone scaffolds have become apparent.
A group of researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada have created a handheld 3D skin printer for treating deep wounds. The portable printing device, reportedly the first of its kind, is capable of precisely depositing layers of a bioink directly into a deep wound to help with the healing process.
EnvisionTEC and EasyRx, a developer of orthodontic prescription software, today announced the integration of their software for ease of use. EasyRx allows users to submit, manage and track orthodontic lab prescriptions, including preparing and labeling them for 3D printing. Now, EasyRx users can simply launch an STL file in EnvisionTEC’s Perfactory software by clicking the EnvisionTEC logo within EasyRx. Users can now go from digital scan to 3D print faster than ever before.
With lots of exciting additive manufacturing industry news coming in last week from RAPID+TCT and Hannover Messe, this week seems to be dominated by another industry: the medical sector. So far, we’ve seen new 3D printed implants from Medtronic, EnvisionTEC partnerships and financial announcements from CollPlant from the medical tech, dental and bioprinting fields. Find today’s highlights below:
Looking back over the last decade, it is clear from the vantage point of 2017 that additive manufacturing (AM) has caused significant disruption in the medical sector. Indeed, in no other sector has AM had such a profound and dramatic effect on the human condition in terms of improving lives — whether directly at the point of need within clinical environments or communities or indirectly as a manufacturing method for greatly improved medical devices. Currently, despite the direct approach dominating many ‘3D Printing’ headlines as surgeons and clinicians increasingly embrace the AM systems at the point of need for patient-specific applications, it is the latter, indirect approach, that has seen significant results for higher volume, serial production with AM by medical device manufacturers.
It seems the excitement surrounding 3D Systems’ game-changing Figure 4 additive manufacturing technology has not been lost on the U.S. Air Force. In an announcement at RAPID+TCT yesterday, 3D Systems revealed that its Figure 4 Production system had been chosen for Air Force-sponsored research.
A new study presented at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) Scientific Sessions illuminates the effectiveness of using 3D printed models to determine the risk of paravalvular leak (PVL) in patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) operations.