HP Innovation Journal Issue 13: Winter 2019 | Page 53

Today, hospitals must order and stock surgical tools from
distant manufacturers in a process that’s often wasteful
and inefficient, because specialized tools come in kits that
can contain instruments the surgeon doesn’t need. But
researchers are pushing forward with ideas to 3D print
instruments on demand with no stockpiling, shipping, or
unwanted kit components.
One Army and Navy team found that a plastic surgical
retractor they printed could do the job of much more expen-
sive metal instruments. “Our estimates place the cost per
unit of a 3D-printed retractor to be roughly a tenth of the
cost of a stainless steel instrument,” they wrote in a paper
published in the Journal of Surgical Research.
Engineers are also making significant progress 3D print-
ing implants and prostheses that perfectly fit a patient’s
dimensions. 3D-printed implants from sugar-based vas-
cular stents that hold blood vessels open during surgery
and then quickly dissolve to polymer-based, biodegradable
grafts of defective blood vessels themselves are on the way.
Colling says HP has been innovating on all fronts related
to 3D printing for healthcare. Researchers have taken
HP’s deep expertise in microfluidics printing technology
and are now applying it to innovate therapeutic appli-
cations, including printing pharmaceutical samples to
accelerate the testing of new antibiotics and 3D printing
custom-built prosthetics.
“3D printing has been around for a while, but the technology
for producing durable color anatomical and implantable
parts didn’t exist and wasn’t scalable, especially for health-
care settings,” Colling says. “HP has broken this barrier
with its Jet Fusion 3D printing technology and we’re now
partnering with others to bring it to scale.”
BIOPRINTING AIDS REGENERATION
Data is also helping scientists and surgeons better under-
stand the basic biology underpinning our bodies. Armed
with new insights, researchers are making biotechnology
products that help patients heal.
In May, researchers revealed they had successfully used a
3D printing technique called projection stereolithography
to engineer blood vessel networks. The news, which was big
enough to land the cover of the journal Science, showed how
far tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting has come.
Scientists have been working on bioprinting for decades
with the promise that it will one day be a powerful tool for
regenerative medicine. Burn patients could have compat-
ible skin grafts printed in the OR and transplanted on the
spot. Those with lung defects could have some of their
stem cells harvested to grow a new, better pair.
Some of these ideas have already made it into clinics. In
2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved
the first engineered tissue, lab-grown knee cartilage made
from a patient’s own cells. Others have been approved to
repair bone, skin, and cardiac defects, and more are in the
pipeline. Researchers also see huge potential in creating
tissue and organs from a patient’s cells for personalized
drug screening and disease modeling. Meanwhile, some
are investigating using engineered tissue like mini-brains
to test new therapies.
The promise of 3D printing a kidney or knee cartilage
on a lab bench is only one of the sci-fi-like possibilities,
says Ali Khademhosseini, a University of California,
Los Angeles, chemical and biological engineer. Many
scientists see an even more significant opportunity in
so-called in-situ regeneration.
The idea is to deliver therapies that trigger the body’s own
tissue engineering capabilities to a patient’s defective or
injured part. Khademhosseini says research is underway to
harvest heart cells, reprogram them, and reintroduce them
after a patient suffers a heart attack to heal and restart the
organ. Another recent study healed skin ulcers by applying
sheets of cells to turn on the body’s ability to regenerate.
“We have a lot of opportunities for bioprinting even outside
of printing something like a whole heart for transplanta-
tion, which is still a long way off,” Khademhosseini says.
“I’m confident we can make healing from injury or defect
much better and faster.”
With advances like those being made in Khademhosseini’s
lab, and in robotics, VR and AR, the future of surgery will
usher in a revolution in human health. Using patient data,
AI, biotechnology, and highly trained healthcare profes-
sionals, “we believe we can make doctors superhuman,”
says SentiAR’s Tas. “When they’re put at the center of all
these digital tools and the contextualized data the instru-
ments are creating, surgeons will have abilities they never
had before.”
This article originally appeared on the Garage by HP.
Visit garage.ext.hp.com for more stories on how technology
is improving our world.
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