“Printers allow the proper placement of multiple cell types, biomaterials and bioactive molecules in defined locations. They also offer the ability to control the size, microarchitecture and interconnectivity of pores in the scaffolds essential to transporting oxygen and nutrients for cell survival. The technology also offers the option of using a patient’s medical images, such as MRI or CT scans, to tailor-make organs.”
WFIRM is leading the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine: Warrior Restoration Consortium, known as AFIRM II, funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Medical Service, the VA Office of Research and Development, the National Institutes of Health, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.
The potential applications of this rapidly developing new technology include treating active-duty service members and veterans, from the first medical treatment facility (MTF) in theater to both major and remote hospitals and clinics in the United States and around the globe.
AFIRM II follows the path set by the original AFIRM program, first funded in 2008 with a focus on limb, burn, craniofacial, and scarless wound repair and compartment syndrome, moving projects through advanced development to speed innovations to patients who needed them.
In reviewing its future efforts, independently and with AFIRM, WFIRM is looking at how 3-D printing can be employed to help provide the complex tissue components needed to deal with craniofacial trauma, a debilitating injury due to the important functional and aesthetic roles of the face and skull. Injuries from blasts and high-velocity projectiles, common from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, are difficult to repair with current methods, requiring more imaginative ways to generate replacement bone, nerves, blood vessels, fat, and muscle.
The potential applications of this rapidly developing new technology include treating active-duty service members and veterans, from the first medical treatment facility (MTF) in theater to both major and remote hospitals and clinics in the United States and around the globe. For example, eye surgeons at Hong Kong Polytechnic University are using extremely accurate 3-D-printed customized molds to repair fractured eye sockets and achieve higher success and faster recovery rates for implant surgery.
“Apart from using ready-made implants, which is the most common surgical approach at present, 3-D printing has provided us with an alternative and more precise way to reconstruct different orbital bones,” according to Dr. Kelvin Chong, assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (WHK) Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science and coordinator of Orbital and Oculoplastic Surgery Service at two hospitals: WHK and Prince of Wales Hospital Eye Centre. “Customized molds can be 3-D-printed within three to four hours and we can simply press the two halves together to create the necessary shape.”
The most prolific user of 3-D-printed replacement body parts is dentistry, with an estimated one million dental parts printed and implanted worldwide. Again, the U.S. military has been a leader in this arena as it sought to deal with one of the least publicized but most common combat injuries of the past 15 years – IED blasts that caused serious facial damage, in some cases resulting in the loss of teeth, jaws, and related structures. Using extensive dental records and facial X-rays now taken before any service member is deployed, Army dental labs are able to rapidly 3-D print highly accurate crowns, bridges, jaws, and a range of other orthodontic appliances.
3-D printing is being combined with other new technologies to create a host of new possibilities in medicine, but also advanced laser technology, microscopy, solar cells, electronics, environmental testing, disease detection, and more.
“Global Dental 3D Printing Market Outlook: 2014-2020,” a market research report from Meticulous Research, predicts a compound annual growth rate of 23.3 percent in the global dental 3-D printing market by the end of 2020. DOD – and especially the VA – are expected to be among the leaders in that market.
The two biggest obstacles to 3-D printing of complex organs, such as hearts, eyes, and kidneys, are vascularization – the networks of veins, arteries and capillaries required to nourish a functioning body part and filter out waste – and tissue rejection, in which the body sees an implant as a dangerous foreign invader and marshals whatever efforts are needed to destroy it.