Breca Healthcare to reconstruct eye orbit with 3D printing

Breca Healthcare CEO José Manuel Baena poses with a 3D printed skull.

We have been reading about the wonders that 3D printing will bring us for some years now, but its real impact on our health, for example, is still only anecdotal. However, the efforts of those who have believed in additive manufacturing since its inception are beginning to bear fruit and, little by little, with the technology ready and a lot of education, they are carving out a niche in the market.

This is the case of BRECA Health Care, a company from Granada, which is going to reach a first milestone by getting a 3D printed piece to be used to make a facial reconstruction of the orbit and part of the zygomatic arch of the skull. The company cannot yet reveal the details, but before the end of the year a hospital will host the procedure, which will be promoted once the postoperative period is over. “When we started there was fear of the technology but by presenting documentation and evidence we have managed to get it certified,” says José Manuel Baena, CEO of BRECA Health Care, about the European Union license received recently.

Baena considers the start-up to be “mere service providers for doctors”, i.e. physicians can now turn to this company, which is essentially made up of engineers, and ask for what they want to do and could not do with standard technologies. “Traumatologists are our eyes and we don’t do anything if we don’t work hand in hand with them,” insists Baena, who admits that the expertise of those who make up BRECA Health Care is in technology.

After the case of this first complex reconstruction with 3D printing, the sales phase of its customized prostheses made of titanium will follow. “The good thing is that we can customize not only the external appearance but also the internal appearance,” notes Baena, who praises the possibility of creating meshed structures because they allow “promoting bone growth and integration.”

BRECA Health Care is now in the process of validating the 3D printing license for prostheses -which also allow a closer approximation to the real physiognomy and can be printed imitating the thickness of the bone and therefore improving its resistance- in other countries and they have their sights set especially on Latin America, where they already have representatives in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Chile and an associate in Mexico.

The company, which was present at Biospain with a presentation on its advances, expects to bill between 100,000 and 200,000 euros this year thanks essentially to the engineering projects with which it helps health centers or research groups by making prototypes and medical devices for them, such as: implants, rehabilitation devices and a tomograph for ultrasound tomography in submerged environments.

But the company does not only intend to innovate today. It is already working on what for them is the future of medicine, 3D bioprinting of biological tissues, having developed a pioneering system for cartilage bioprinting. In this area, their business model is now also going through a new phase in which they are going to help those leading cell therapies. “We don’t want to invent the car but the wrench to assemble it,” the CEO graphically defines in reference to the machinery and software for 3D tissue bioprinting that they have developed to boost researchers and enable them to move from 2D to 3D in their research. It is a machine that allows them to control the parameters of the environment and bioprint with various materials, whether solids or gels. “We want to help those who do not have the funding to set up a bioprinting system or to hire a group of engineers to develop it for them and to accompany them by adapting the machine to new tissues and conditions if necessary,” he explains.

The first beneficiaries of this aid will be the research groups in advanced therapies at the University of Granada with whom Baena actively collaborates. Baena recalls that “there is still a long way to go” to be able to 3D print an organ, but he is confident that his motto ” keep calm and back to the lab” will eventually bear fruit in the form of future implants of 3D bioprinted tissues and organs.

Via www.elmundo.es