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A group of researchers at Louisiana Tech University in the United States have developed an innovative method of using a home 3D printer to manufacture customized medical implants containing drugs that are gradually released into the body, including chemotherapeutic treatments.

Until now, medical implants that release medication in a controlled manner were made in a generic way, attending to the most common doses and pathologies, not allowing individualized use with the appropriate components and doses for each patient.

Researchers at Louisiana Tech University have broken this impediment by working on a project that has developed an extruder to create a filament for medical use that can be used in home-type 3D printers. The key is in the filament, which is made with the medical compounds needed for drug release once implanted in the body, usually itradermally.

The base material of the filament is absorbed by the human body in a natural way, and it is loaded with antibiotics or other medical compounds. This makes it possible to create customized implants for each patient, adding the appropriate doses of the medications they need.

According to Jeffrey Weisman, one of the developers of the project, the use of implants for personalized drug delivery is a growing trend in the medical sector. The method of creating clinical-use filament for 3D printers will allow hospitals and pharmacies a new way to prescribe drugs. “One of the biggest benefits of this method is that we can use any home-type 3D printer that we can find anywhere in the world,” commented the researcher. In fact, the printer they have used is a MakerBot Replicator, the most widespread model of domestic 3D printers.

 

The system has been developed in a collaboration between departments of biomedical engineering, nanosystems and nanoelectrical systems, following an inquiry from Dr. David Mills as to whether antibiotic capsules could be 3D printed with some kind of material absorbable by the human body.

Most of today’s antibiotic implants such as discs are made of bone cement, a material that must be mixed by hand during a small surgery. These discs are usually made of plexiglass, which means they have to be removed after treatment is complete. The filament they have developed in Louisiana is a bioplastic that is absorbed into the human body avoiding this second intervention to remove the implant.

In addition, the system they have developed allows the creation of these implants with hollow areas, to allow a larger surface area in contact with the tissue and permit a more controlled release of the medication. On the other hand, the research team points out that these implants can be localized in specific areas, thus avoiding the dispersion of the drug and possible damage to other organs such as the liver or kidneys.

“Currently, incorporating the additives into the plastic requires an industrial-type facility to allow for proper dispersion throughout the plastic,” says Mills, “Our method allows for much smaller scale dispersion, making available to researchers a way to customize the additives to the levels required. There is no other process, even industrial, for making antibiotic- or drug-specific release implants, as injection molding is currently focused more on colorants and aesthetic properties,” says the researcher. “It is really novel and the first time in the world that a customized antibiotic or chemotherapy substance release device is 3D printed.”

 

Great product designers design great experiences. Although it may seem counterintuitive, a useful approach to designing a physical product is to view it as a series of experiences.

Rather than thinking of the result as an object, an experience-based approach helps redirect attention to how an item is used and what benefits it can provide to the user. Owning a coffee machine means enjoying coffee, not having a couple of pounds of metal and plastic on the kitchen bench.

There are a variety of experiences or interactions that a user has to discover, select, use, even forget. Everything has a positive, neutral or negative impact on the feeling we get from owning and/or using the item. Even the acts of taking the item home from the store and ‘unboxing’ are opportunities to engage the new owner, which reinforce the feeling that they have made a great choice, and thanks to that the manufacturers gain a fan.

Designers often use user maps as a tool to capture and track all the touch points that are anticipated to be encountered by customers throughout the shopping experience. Many years ago, Jan Carlzon, then president of Scandinavian Airlines, wrote about these interaction points as the “moments of truth.” While not a traditional tool for physical product design, user maps that identify interaction points and the evaluation of each can be very useful.

Product = experience is a useful methodology for industrial designers. Thinking in terms of experience and thinking “beyond the product” offers another view for designers when developing a concept, and can help uncover additional opportunities to provide value to the user.

This is how it works, we start thinking and keep thinking, until it becomes too boring or too big in our minds, at which point we start to doubt our capabilities, or get scared that someone will take advantage of “My great idea!”. If you are lucky and manage to get out of your initial inhibitions and insecurities, then you can start talking about it with others. It would be better if you talked about it with everyone (not just someone) … you have nothing to lose at this point… because the idea is just that… an idea.

https://www.farmacia-cercana.com/

The more you talk about it, the more seriously you will be taken. That gives you power, but at the same time it puts you in a vulnerable position where you could be influenced by other people’s opinions and even more so if they are negative. It is at this point that your entrepreneurial dream runs the risk of being crushed to death. But talking too much is not going to get you investment (€€€€). Therefore, at some point (the sooner the better) it is time to work on building a working prototype.

“Don’t expect perfection. Life is not perfect. Do the best you can. Real people launch something, test it, and then launch it again. Eventually you wake up one day and you have something unbelievably great.”- Guy Kawasaki

Photo credits: Percy Pilcher, “Hawk” glider, the “Knob”, Eynsford, 1897

A working prototype will be a testament to the potential of your idea and what you and your team can develop. Yes, a power-point and a well-developed business plan is important, but not as important as a good prototype. Don’t wait any longer, just row back and make the best prototype of your idea … and thank yourself that you finally did it. In essence … stop thinking, start talking; stop worrying and start working! Start flying 🙂

Photo credits: Rossy, “The JetMan”.

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