Scientists Can 3D Print Face Parts To Help Burn Victims, People With Deformities

Scientists have developed a way to use 3D printing technology to create facial parts for people who have missing facial features due to a birth-deform or scarring due to an accident.?

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As reported first by BBC, this novel tech is being developed by researchers from Swansea University along with the Scar Free Foundation who have announced a three-year programme worth ?2.5 million for ‘regenerative research’.

Today, patients who have suffered the loss of facial features and are using plastic prostheses have often complained that they’ve often felt synthetic and didn’t feel like a part of them. Most of them have preferred to use their own tissue for reconstruction of the deformed region.?

The new technology does exactly this, by forming a custom ‘cartilage’ scaffold where the patient’s own stem cells can grow on. This eliminates the need to take cartilage from other parts of the body -- a painful process resulting in more surgeries and scarring.?

Scarfree.org

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To 3D print parts from human cells, the first step involves taking human cartilage-specific stem cells from a patient and combining it with nanocellulose that comes from plants to create a ‘bioink’. This ink will be fed into equipment (developed by Cellink) that would print the part one layer at a time.?

Cartilage is a connective tissue of our body that provides a framework to enable the bone structure to develop. The novel process would allow stem cells to grow on the cartilage structure, preparing it for facial reconstruction.?

The project's leader Professor Iain Whitaker at Swansea University, explains, “The impact of this work could be really exciting. It would give us as surgeons the ability to take cells from the human body, to expand them and put them into an ink, which could literally be printed into a three-dimensional structure [and] implanted back into the human body.”

He added, “This, from our point of view as surgeons, would mean we wouldn't have to take tissue from elsewhere in the body, so it would be limiting scarring, limiting pain and you would be increasing options to help people reconstruct defects.”

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Simon Weston, a Welsh veteran of the British Army who recovered from serious burn injuries suffered during the Falklands War is the lead ambassador of the Scar Free Foundation.?

He said, “It’s fantastic that this research is taking place and what we are going to do is amazing. This new research – bioprinting ear and nose cartilage made from the patient’s own cells – would have made a big difference to me. There simply wasn’t the research or capability at the time to rebuild my ears – I literally had to watch them fall off. This research also avoids the need for skin grafts taken from other parts of the body – a process which itself can be very painful and leaves behind new scars.”