The medical field is one of the many areas that 3D printing has the potential to revolutionize, a fact which is further demonstrated by new 3D printing technique that a group of researchers have created that enables them to print cartilage that could be used to repair damaged windpipes.
3D-printed cartilage could help repair damaged windpipes
Believe it or not, scientists aren’t yet finished discovering new ways to 3D print body parts. A team at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research has developed a 3D printing technique that lets them produce cartilage for repairing damaged tracheas, better known to you and I as windpipes. They use an off-the-shelf 3D printer (in this case, a MakerBot Replicator 2X Experimental) to create a scaffold for the cartilage out of the same PLA filament you’d use for everyday 3D printing projects. After that, they cover the scaffold in a mix of chondrocytes (healthy cartilage cells) and collagen, ‘baking’ it in a custom bioreactor to make sure the cells grow properly.
NOTE: TECHi Two-Takes are the stories we have chosen from the web along with a little bit of our opinion in a paragraph. Please check the original story in the Source Button below.
TECHi weighs both sides before reaching a conclusion.
TECHi’s editorial take above outlines the reasoning that supports this position.