Researchers at the Institute for Polymers and Composites in Portugal are engineering new tissues that include both human cells and polymers in an effort to make bio-compatible implants and potentially organ replacements.  Their production tool of choice: 3D printers.

The tests, highlighted in Science Daily, make use of rapid prototyping machines to create the hybrid tissues. The idea is to take the cells from a patient or donor and meld them in a lab with a degradable material that can be implanted in place of the damaged tissues as bridges, and eventually, as fully functional organs.

This is an interesting development, as the custom implant industry has mainly been limited to titanium and other metals or tiny machines, but nothing that could be mistaken for organic material.

Anatomics is seeking FDA approval for PMMA material for custom cranial implants.

The potential breakthrough in Portugal is relevant to many medical 3D technology firms.  A few weeks back, I spoke with Larry Ward, CEO of US operations in North Carolina for Anatomics, which is headquartered in Australia. Anatomics is advancing both bone and organ 3D models, while attempting to get into the custom implants business in the states.  On the first front, Antomics receives doctor submitted scans of, say, a person’s skull, after the patient has suffered an accident or developed a cancerous tumor that needs removing, and will require reconstructive surgery.   Using a Z Corp machine, Anatomics prints out an exact replica of the skull or bone, and then autoclaves it in an xlaForm machine.  Why the extra step?  It turns out SLA parts, at least in unfinished form, cannot enter the sterile operating room

because they are porous. But the ones properly cured can, allowing the doctor or surgeon to fit a metal implant or reconstructive bridge on the model to fit the patient.  This all goes on before the surgery, but also serves as a working model during surgery.

“It’s no longer about fitting the patient to the implant, it’s about fitting the implant to the patient,” Ward told me.

Anatomics is now working to receive FDA clearance for polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a transparent material that is already been approved in Europe, for cranial and other implants. But the long-term goal of the company is to use RP machines to build bones and tissues. 

“The plan is that we would eventually we would be manufacturing the implants for the surgeons on a patient-by-patient basis. Not one of our implants would anatomically fit another patient, they would all be custom," Ward says.

And that's about as custom as you can get.