UNSW builds up a clay based ink to 3D-print bone parts with living cells

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: University of New South Wales


• Date: 26 Jan,2021

3D printers may one day become a permanent fixture of the operating theatre after UNSW scientists showed they could print bone-like structures comprising living cells.

Researchers from UNSW Sydney have developed a ceramic-based ink which may allow surgeons in the long run to 3D-print bone elements complete with living cells which could be used to repair damaged bone tissue.

Using a 3D-printer that deploys a particular ink composed of calcium phosphate, the scientists developed a new technique, called ceramic omnidirectional bioprinting in cell-suspensions (COBICS), allowing them to publish bone-like structures that harden in a matter of minutes when placed in water.

While the notion of 3D-printing bone-mimicking structures isn’t new, this is the first time such material can be made at room temperature – complete with living cells – and without harsh chemicals or radiation, says Dr Iman Roohani from UNSW’s School of Chemistry.

Associate Professor Kristopher Kilian that co-developed the breakthrough technology with Dr Roohani states that living cells may be a part of their 3D-printed construction, together with its portability, make it a large progress on current state-of-the-art technology.

Up until today, he says, creating a part of bone-like material to repair bone tissue of a patient involves first going to a lab to fabricate the structures utilizing non-metallic furnaces and poisonous chemicals.

“This produces a dry material that is then brought to a clinical setting or in a laboratory, in which they wash it profusely and then add living cells into it,” Professor Kilian says.

We can go right into the bone where there are cells, blood vessels and fat, and print a bone-like structure that already contains living cells, right in this area.”

“There are currently no technologies that can do that directly.”

In a research paper published recently in Advanced Functional Materials, the authors describe how they developed the specific ink in a microgel matrix with living cells.

“The ink takes advantage of a setting mechanism during the neighborhood nanocrystallisation of its elements in aqueous environments, converting the inorganic ink to mechanically interlocked bone apatite nanocrystals,” Dr Roohani says.

“In other words, it creates a structure that is chemically similar to bone-building blocks.

He says if the ink is blended with a collagenous substance comprising living cells, it enables in-situ fabrication of bone-like tissues which might be suitable for bone tissue engineering applications, disease modelling, drug screening, and in-situ reconstruction of bone and osteochondral defects.

Already there was keen interest from surgeons and medical technology producers. A/Prof. Kilian thinks while it’s early days, this new bone-printing procedure could open up a whole new way of treating and repairing bone tissue.

“This advance actually paves the way for numerous opportunities that we believe could prove transformational – by using the ink to make bone in the lab for disease modelling, as a bioactive material for dental restoration, to direct bone grafting at a patient,” says A/Prof. Kilian.

“I imagine a day where a patient needing a bone graft can walk into a practice at which the anatomical structure of their bone is imaged, translated to a 3D printer, and printed into the cavity with their own cells.

Next up the duo will be performing in vivo tests in animal models to determine whether the surviving cells in the bone-like constructs continue to grow after being implanted in existing bone tissue.