News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Chicago-based biotech company BIOLIFE4D announced this week that it has successfully 3D bioprinted a human cardiac tissue patch, bringing the company a small step closer to its ultimate goal of 3D bioprinting a viable and transplantable human heart.
As per a new partnership agreement, Shanghai-based 3D printing company INTAMSYS will be collaborating with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to further advance additive manufacturing applications for orthopaedic surgery and, specifically, applications for PEEK and other high-performance materials.
Antibacterial materials and filaments for 3D printing, something that many consider being a key development for biomedical 3D printing applications – are now widely available through a series of new materials introduced by Santhiago, Chile-based startup Copper3D.
Poietis, a leading French bioprinting company and Prometheus, the Division of Skeletal Tissue Engineering at KU Leuven, entered into a 2-years Collaborative Research Agreement focused on high-precision 3D Bioprinting of tissue engineered Advanced Therapeutic Medicinal Products (ATMPs) for skeletal regeneration.
Additive manufacturing pioneer 3D Systems has introduced its new On Demand Anatomical Modeling Service for medical 3D printing applications. The newly launched service provides medical professionals access to 3D printable and highly detailed anatomical models for improving surgical planning as well as patient education.
Oxford Performance Materials (OPM) is a fascinating company founded in 2000 to exploit and commercialize the use of poly-ether-ketone-ketone (PEKK) through additive manufacturing for medical and industrial applications. The company developed a high-performance additive manufacturing (HPAM) process (a modified laser sintering approach) to produce fully functional, end-use structural parts. Now the company is furthering its expansion into key Asia markets: business development of OPM Asia, a partnership with Tokyo-based JSR Corporation (JSR), is now led by experienced medical device sector executive Curt Jennewine, who will serve as will serve as OPM Asia’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
With increasing life expectancies across much of the globe, the need for medication and treatments for age-related degenerative muscle and tendon diseases is growing. And though much research is being done on that front, medical scientists have faced consistent challenges in developing effective drugs for muscle degeneration. Fortunately, a team of researchers in Switzerland is conducting microplate bioprinting research that could offer a solution to one of the main challenges in developing treatments.
Chanua Health, a healthcare innovation company working out of Liverpool’s technical innovation center Sensor City, recently turned to 3D printing technologies to help educate young students about the importance of mental health. Working with support from Sensor City, Chanua Health 3D printed an interactive brain model that teaches students about different parts of the brain and about mental health in a stigma-less way.
French 3D printing company Prodways Group, a subsidiary of Groupe Gorgé, has announced the launch of a new 3D printer, the compact ProMaker LD-3, for the dental, jewelry, education and prototyping markets. Introduced in partnership with W2P, the new 3D printer is based on Prodways’ UV-LED DLP technology.
Inaccurate reports on bioprinting functional organs run the risk of raising false expectations within the public, with the inevitable “let downs” that follow. These are made even more intense by the “life and death” nature of some organ transplants. Yet, bioprinting is opening up some truly amazing possibilities in the field of regenerative medicine and stem cell-derived tissues, that could result in significant life expectancy and quality of life improvements. A detailed paper published on Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, by a team of researchers at the University of Victoria, analyzes the state of bioprinting with stem cells to accurately answer the questions on many people’s minds: what can we bioprint today? And what can we achieve in the foreseeable future in terms of regenerative medicine applications?