![]() Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other clinical uses. They began with polycaprolactone, or PCL, a biodegradable polyester used in making polyurethane that has been approved by the U.S. ![]() In their experiments, Grayson and his team set out to make a composite material that would combine the strength and printability of plastic with the biological “information” contained in natural bone. “The ideal scaffold is another piece of bone, but natural bones can’t usually be reshaped very precisely.” The process excels at making extremely precise structures - including anatomically accurate ones - from plastic, but “cells placed on plastic scaffolds need some instructional cues to become bone cells,” said Grayson. That has led investigators to 3-D printing, or so-called additive manufacturing, which creates three-dimensional objects from a digital computer file by piling on successive, ultrathin layers of materials. But, according to Warren Grayson, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the report’s senior author, the procedure not only creates leg trauma but also falls short because the relatively straight fibula can’t be shaped to fit the subtle curves of the face very well. Historically, the best treatment required surgeons to remove part of a patient’s fibula (a leg bone that doesn’t bear much weight), cut it into the general shape needed and implant it in the right location. That’s the recipe for success reported by researchers at The Johns Hopkins University in a paper published online in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.Įach year, the Johns Hopkins scientists say, birth defects, trauma or surgery leave an estimated 200,000 people in need of replacement bones in the head or face. To make a good framework for filling in missing bone, mix at least 30 percent pulverized natural bone with some special man-made plastic and create the needed shape with a 3-D printer.
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