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Sep 18, 2014 | By Alec

Skin graft application and bioprinting system

A very promising 3D printer stepped into the spotlights at the Canadian leg of the 2014 James Dyson Awards, an international design contest for engineering students. For the deserved winner of the Canadian award was the PrintAlive Bioprinter, a 3D printer that is capable of producing artificial skin grafts for burn victims. While still in a pre-commercial stage of development, the PrintAlive Bioprinter is looking to be far more efficient that traditional ways to develop skin grafts, can therefore expect a promising future in the medical world.

2nd generation bioprinter

The PrintAlive Bioprinter has been developed by two University of Toronto engineering students (with focuses on mechanical and biomedical engineering, respectively): Arianna McAllister and Lian Leng. It started out as an MASc project for both, after which Leng continued it as a PhD project.

Rendered image of 3rd generation bioprinter

And remarkably, there are some similarities between their inspiring and ground-breaking PrintAlive Bioprinter, and traditional extrusion 3D printing technology. But rather than creating skin grafts layer-upon-layer like an FDM printer produces plastic, their medical machine extrudes a hydrogel that might best be called a 'living bandage'. The gel consists of a mixture of biopolymer, human keratinocytes (a type of skin cell) and fibroblasts (cellular structures that play a crucial role in wound healing).

This mixture is then extruded in a 3D structure that is not unlike the outer layers of human skin – the epidermal and dermal layers, for you medical geeks. During extrusion, the mixture is printed into discrete and well-defined cellular regions, mimicking actual skin cells. This makes it a particularly useful substance for the treatment of burn victims as it can simply be places on top of burn wounds.

Patterns in base biopolymer

The 3D patterns of their hydrogel

Furthermore, it overcomes several traditional problems in treatment of severe burn wounds. Most significantly, this gel can be produced in great quantities in a relatively short period of time, whereas other methods of growing cells often take weeks to cultivate. This is a severely debilitating problem that needs to be overcome, as help simply comes too late for many victims. As the creators noted, 'in severe burn injuries where both the epidermal and dermal layers of the skin are destroyed, prompt wound closure is critical for favourable patient outcomes and reduced mortality rates; after burn injuries, patient survival is inversely proportional to the time required for wound stabilization and coverage, and the mortality rate increases by 10% for every additional 10% surface area burn.'

Different assembly methods after extrusion

The PrintAlive Bioprinter is therefore a major step towards increasing the survival rates of burn victims. In the near future, they hope to even be able to produce large custom-built sheets of hydrogel at a moment's notice.

But there are more advantages to their 3D printed skin mixture. Not only will the PrintAlive use cell structures from the patients themselves to reduce the risk of infection or even rejection by the host, it will also reduce costs through efficiency. As the creators explain, 'our ability to localize high concentrations of human cells rather than homogeneously populating the entire sheet has the added advantage of reducing by up to 75% the number of cells required. This promises improvements in the time required for pre-operative graft preparation.'

Unfortunately, a lot of work still needs to be done before the PrintAlive 3D printers can become commonplace in hospitals around the world. Leng and McAllister are currently on their second-generation prototype, which is still in a pre-commercial phase. They are currently looking into developing larger scale printers suitable for complex animal models. The $3,500 prize for winning the James Dyson Award will certainly help in this respect. Hopefully, we can start seeing commercially usable versions of the PrintAlive Bioprinter in the near future.

Also check out this video detailing the mechanisms of the PrintAlive Bioprinter:

 

Posted in 3D Printers

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