The UK’s工程和物理科学研究委员会（EPSRC）已授予诺丁汉大学600万英镑来开发一个工具包，该工具包有助于将3D打印到该国的医院和手术中。
Using this grant, researchers at the university’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing (CfAM) plan to come up with an instructional toolkit that facilitates the 3D printing of custom medical devices across the NHS. It’s thought the scientists’ platform could allow for the development of treatments such as prosthetic limbs, ‘smart pills’ and even intestinal patches that rebuild tissues damaged through chronic disease.
“这是非常令人兴奋的工作,通过内置的g cellular models, will improve our understanding of how the gut functions,” said Professor Mohammad Ilyas, a consultant at NHS Nottingham. “More importantly, if successful, it will lead to a paradigm shift in clinical management and launch the use of autologous tissue-engineered therapeutics for the treatment of bowel disease.”
诺丁汉的添加剂制造中心雷电竞充值
Located on its Jubilee Campus, the University of Nottingham’s CfAM carries out fundamental and applied research in the field of 3D printing. As the technology advances, the team there believes it’ll move beyond the use of single feedstocks into a form of multiple-material printing, in which the functional and structural are deployed in unison to unlock durable, life-changing medical devices.
To help facilitate this transition, Nottingham’s CfAM group is working to investigate the processes, materials, and computational methods, that underpin the 3D printing of multifunctional parts. The group also works with commercial partners to translate its technology into real-world use cases, and it has even set up a consultancy firm,Added Scientific，适当与行业互动。
In the past, the university’s work has seen it investigate the use of3D打印用于秘密信息存储and collaborate with伦敦大学学院开发一个3D打印的脑头盔. Nottingham researchers have also previously contributed to a麻省理工学院(MIT)研究3D打印的环境影响.
在NHS中驾驶AM
尽管Medical 3D打印在基于实验室的情况下继续取得进步，但该技术很少在更广泛的医疗保健领域中使用。毫无疑问，对此类患者特定设备的需求仍然很强大，但是将其推向市场可能是一项漫长的任务，因为它们面对材料和监管批准的障碍。
To get around these issues, the EPSRC, the UK’s main funding body for engineering and physical sciences research, has tasked Nottingham’s CfAM team with developing a toolkit that improves their pathway from research through to adoption, by giving clinicians faster access to cutting-edge technologies.
According to the scientists, medical staff need devices with ‘advanced functionality’ that can be 3D printed quickly, predictably, and reliably, and deliver ‘dial up’ performance. In practice, it’s hoped the team’s platform will facilitate this, by providing the NHS and medtech firms with a toolkit that helps accelerate the process of identifying the right materials and processes for a given job.
“Throughout the pandemic, we saw the COVID-19 vaccines develop at record speed and be implemented safely for the public good,” explained Ricky Wildman, a Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Nottingham. “We now have the chance to build on this success to continue to transform the way we get innovation that makes people’s lives better to market and to clinic.”
Once ready, the team’s platform is set to be rolled out across hospitals, pharmacies, and the wider NHS. In doing so, the Nottingham researchers aim to help realize 3D printing’s potential as a way of producing highly-functional biopharmaceutical products, regenerative medicines, biocatalysis solutions, and more, that would otherwise be impossible to create via traditional manufacturing.
“Multi-material, multi-functional additive manufacturing has the potential to revolutionize the way we realize medtech innovation,” added Wildman. “This funding will transform the market adoption of medical devices and therapies that are truly life-saving for patients.”
Although 3D printing is a long way from being deployed at scale in the NHS, it continues to find one-off applications in surgical planning and patient-specific implant production. Late last year, a cancer patient was treated with a3D bioprinted nose grown on her forearm, by clinicians at theClaudius Regaud Instituteand Toulouse University Hospital.
在该技术的更常规应用中，迪拜医生还宣布，他们设法通过治疗患者的畸形3D printed titanium face implants. The one-of-its-kind case saw the team completely reconstruct the male patient’s facial bones, which had been severely damaged from several benign tumors.
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特色图像显示了在CFAM上测试3D打印设置的工程师。通过诺丁汉大学的照片。
