Healing Tech: Smart gel-based 3D printed sheet to heal nerve injuries
The Community News/New Delhi
Indian scientists have developed smart gel-based 3D printed sheet to reduce complexity of surgeries and aid in faster healing of nerve injuries.
As of now, the doctors use autografts for treatment of peripheral injuries but the new smart gel-based 3D printed sheet can self roll to form nerve conduit.
Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru scientists have developed the tech to overcome clinical shortcomings.
“In 3D printing, a virtual model of the part is created using design software and the part is then fabricated using a 3D printer by layer-upon-layer deposition of the material.
3D printed parts can further undergo a shape change on demand upon activation after fabrication.
Such technologies are now widely known as four-dimensional (4D) printing, where time is the extra dimension,” IISc Professor Kaushik Chatterjee said.
Chatterjee along with his team has engineered a bilayered gel sheet by 3D printing in predefined patterns from two gels.
“The gel formulations were selected to swell differently. When the dried gel sheet was immersed in water, it rapidly swelled and curled into a tube.
The folding behaviour and final shape of the gel could be programmed to generate tubes of desired dimensions, which could be predicted by computational modeling.
The gel sheets were then coated with thin nanometer-scale fibers to enable the body’s cells to adhere to the gel sheet,” he added.
The IISc team has worked closely with IIT Roorkee and Maharishi Markandeshwar University to test the 4D printed conduits.
These conduits were then used for repairing and regenerating a 2 mm gap in the sciatic nerve of rats.
Though the tech is yet to go on human clinical trials, it can pave way for new devices to aid surgeons during surgery to heal nerves and tissues in years to come.
