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Bone-like material created with 3D printer
Thursday December 01, 2011 09:27:29 PM,
IANS
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Washington: It looks,
feels and acts like a real bone -- but it has come off from an
inkjet printer.
Washington State University researchers have used a 3D printer to
create a bone-like material and structure that can be used in
orthopaedic procedures, dental work and even to deliver medicine
for treating osteoporosis.
Paired with actual bone, it acts as a scaffold for new bone to
grow on and ultimately dissolves with no apparent ill effects, the
journal Dental Materials reports.
It's possible that doctors will be able to custom order
replacement bone tissue in a few years, says Susmita Bose,
co-author and a professor in Washington State University School of
Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
"If a doctor has a CT scan of a defect, we can convert it to a CAD
file and make the scaffold according to the defect," Bose says.
They're already seeing promising results with in vivo (body) tests
on rats and rabbits, according to a university statement.
The material grows out of a four-year inter-disciplinary effort
involving chemistry, materials science, biology and manufacturing.
A main finding is that the addition of silicon and zinc more than
doubled the strength of the main material, calcium phosphate. The
researchers also spent a year optimising a commercially available
ProMetal 3D printer designed to make metal objects.
The printer works by having an inkjet spray a plastic binder over
a bed of powder in layers of 20 microns, about half the width of a
human hair. Following a computer's directions, it creates a
channelled cylinder the size of a pencil eraser.
After just a week in a medium with immature human bone cells, the
scaffold was supporting a network of new bone cells, researchers
found.
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