Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 39

A Band-Aid for the Heart? New 3D Printing Method
Makes This, and Much More, Possible
The material is elastic
enough to withstand a
heart's persistent beating.
Colorado University - Boulder
Boulder, CO
In the quest to develop lifelike materials
to replace and repair human
body parts, scientists face a formidable
challenge: Real tissues are often both
strong and stretchable and vary in
shape and size.
A CU Boulder-led team, in collaboration
with researchers at the University of
Pennsylvania, has taken a critical step toward
cracking that code. They've developed
a new way to 3D print material that
is at once elastic enough to withstand a
heart's persistent beating, tough enough
to endure the crushing load placed on
joints, and easily shapable to fit a patient's
unique defects.
Better yet, it sticks easily to wet tissue.
Their breakthrough, described in
the journal Science, helps pave the way
toward a new generation of biomaterials,
from internal bandages that deliver
drugs directly to the heart to cartilage
patches and needle-free sutures.
" Cardiac and cartilage tissues are similar
in that they have very limited capacity
to repair themselves. When they're damaged,
there is no turning back, " says senior
author Jason Burdick, a professor of
chemical and biological engineering at
CU Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute. " By
developing new, more resilient materials
to enhance that repair process, we can
have a big impact on patients. "
n Worm 'Blobs' as Inspiration
Historically, biomedical devices have
been created via molding or casting,
techniques that work well for mass
production of identical implants but
aren't practical when it comes to personalizing
those implants for specific
patients. In recent years, 3D printing
has opened a world of new possibilities
for medical applications by allowing
researchers to make materials in many
shapes and structures.
Unlike typical printers, which simply
place ink on paper, 3D printers deposit
layer after layer of plastics, metals,
Medical Design Briefs, November 2024
The 3D printed material is at once strong, expandable, moldable and sticky. (Credit: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)
or even living cells to create multidimensional
objects.
One specific material, known as a hydrogel
(the stuff that contact lenses are
made of), has been a favorite prospect
for fabricating artificial tissues, organs,
and implants.
But getting these from the lab to the
clinic has been tough because traditional
3D printed hydrogels tend to either break
when stretched, crack under pressure, or
are too stiff to mold around tissues.
" Imagine if you had a rigid plastic adhered
to your heart. It wouldn't deform
as your heart beats, " says Burdick. " It
would just fracture. "
To achieve both strength and elasticity
within 3D printed hydrogels, Burdick
and his colleagues took a cue from
worms, which repeatedly tangle and untangle
themselves around one another
in three-dimensional " worm blobs " that
have both solid and liquid-like properties.
Previous research has shown that incorporating
similarly intertwined chains
of molecules, known as entanglements,
can make them tougher.
Their new printing method, known
as CLEAR (for continuous-curing after
light exposure aided by redox initiation),
follows a series of steps to entangle
long molecules inside 3D printed materials
much like those intertwined worms.
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When the team stretched and
weight-loaded those materials in the
lab (one researcher even ran over a
sample with her bike), they found
them to be exponentially tougher
than materials printed with a standard
method of 3D printing known as digital
light processing (DLP). Better yet: They
also conformed and stuck to animal tissues
and organs.
" We can now 3D print adhesive materials
that are strong enough to mechanically
support tissue, " says co-first author
Matt Davidson, a research associate in
the Burdick Lab. " We have never been
able to do that before. "
n Revolutionizing Care
Burdick imagines a day when such
3D printed materials could be used to
repair defects in hearts, deliver tissueregenerating
drugs directly to organs or
cartilage, restrain bulging discs, or even
stitch people up in the operating room
without inflicting tissue damage like a
needle and suture can.
His lab has filed for a provisional patent
and plans to launch more studies
soon to better understand how tissues
react to the presence of such materials.
But the team stresses that their new
method could have impacts far beyond
medicine - in research and manufac39
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Medical Design Briefs - November 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Medical Design Briefs - November 2024

Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - Intro
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - Sponsor
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV1a
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV1b
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV1
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV2
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 1
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 2
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 3
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 4
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 5
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 6
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 7
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 8
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 9
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 10
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 11
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 12
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 13
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 14
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Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 49
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - 50
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV3
Medical Design Briefs - November 2024 - COV4
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