3D printed smart bandage that stimulates and directs blood vessel growth

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bionews_17102013_02Recently, researchers at University of Illinois have developed a bandage that can promote angiogenesis and direct blood vessel growth on the surface of a wound. The bandage, called a “smart bandage”, contains living cells that deliver growth factors to damaged tissues in a defined pattern.

The bandage is 1 centimeter across and is built of layers of a hydrogel made of polyethylene glycol and methacrylic alginate on a 3D printer.

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Japanese Researchers 3D Print Spine Implants

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bionews_17102013_01Researchers from the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine announced they have implanted 3D printed titanium bone replacements into the spines of four patients. The patients were previously diagnosed with herniated cervical disks. They reported that after the operations walking and other movements became easier for them. The implants also helped ease the numbness some of them were experiencing in their limbs.

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Breast Implants Are Being Revolutionized Thanks to a Special 3D Printer

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Print-your-own breast implants could be one of the new products in the $8.4 billion market of 3D printer products projected for 2025.

TeVido BioDevices is working to commercialize technology that would allow doctors to use a patient’s own fat to print a customized breast implant. The initial focus is reconstructive surgery after breast cancer, but the technology could also make plastic surgery cheaper and more successful.

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First Lab-Grown Kidney Successfully Implanted in a Rat

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Bioengineered-kidney-makes-urineScientists have implanted a laboratory-grown kidney into a rat for the first time, a medical milestone that they hope will soon lead to similar solutions for human beings needing full organ transplants. “It’s the first one ever that’s been implanted into an animal,” said Harald Ott, MD and PhD at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine and the lead researcher behind the project, to The Verge.

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Next to Use 3D Printing: Your Surgeon

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bionews_07102013_01Surgeons at a hospital in Japan recently faced a dilemma before transplanting a parent’s liver into a child: How exactly to trim the organ to fit the space in the child’s smaller cavity while preserving its functions.

So they took a knife to a three-dimensional replica of the donor’s liver built by a machine that resembles an office printer. The model helped the doctors figure out where to carve it, leading to a successful transplant last month.

Surgeons are finding industrial 3-D printers to be a lifesaver on the operating table. This technology, also known as additive manufacturing, has long produced prototypes of jewelry, electronics and car parts. But now these industrial printers are able to construct personalized copies of livers and kidneys, one ultrathin layer at a time.

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3D Printed Skin Will Soon Be Reality Thanks To SkinPrint

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3D-Printed-Skin-Will-Soon-Be-Reality-Thanks-To-SkinPrintThe need for human skin is urgent and ever growing. Patients with burn wounds and skin diseases suffer intensely, due to the removal of skin from a donor site. Many patients cannot be accurately treated with current therapies, since the amount and quality of human skin produced by current techniques is insufficient. Therefore, improvement of human skin production is desperately needed.

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3D-Printing Mechanical Hands

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This is really cool, a MakerBot Industries-supported 3D printable prosthetic hand project.

When Richard Van As, a master carpenter in Johannesburg, South Africa, decided to make a set of mechanical fingers, it wasn’t just for fun

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Blind, expectant parents cry with joy ‘seeing’ baby in utero

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Because of advances in 3-D printing technology, visually impaired expectant parents are for the first time able to “see” their babies in utero via printable plastic models of their sonogram photos.

Blind parents-to-be now have a way to experience the joys of a sonogram (the image produced from an ultrasound scan), thanks to 3-D printing technology that can produce life-sized models of their babies in utero.

While researching ways to improve prenatal diagnostic tools, Brazilian industrial designer Jorge Roberto Lopes dos Santos realized that emerging 3-D printers could give expectant moms and dads with visual impairments a way to cherish the kinds of prenatal keepsakes that other parents-to-be have long enjoyed from traditional sonogram photos.

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