内部人士和分析师预测3D打印趋势to watch in our latest series of articles focused on the future of 3D printing.
Phase Inc是一家位于北卡罗来纳州的医疗3D打印初创公司，与弗吉尼亚理工学院推进微流体3D打印的领域。
同期和弗吉尼亚理工学院将共同使用前者的专有LE3D打印技术来开发新颖的微流体设备，这些设备将帮助研究人员为诸如脑癌等疾病的新医疗治疗。这项工作还有望帮助简化药物发现和个人健康诊断。
杰夫•舒尔茨, co-founder of Phase, said, “We look forward to leveraging this grant to further develop our technology to expand the capabilities of creating microfluidics in ways that are not possible with existing 3D printing or conventional manufacturing technologies.”
The joint project is being funded through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from theNational Center for Advancing Translational Sciences(NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health.
阶段及其LE3D打印技术
Microfluidics relates to the behavior, control, and manipulation of fluids at small scales. Applied to medicine, microfluidic devices are what enable organ-on-a-chip models, which are often described as the “test tubes of the digital age”. These models are capable of simulating the real biological conditions found in the human body, enabling the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic techniques without the need for human volunteers.
“commerci具有重要意义al opportunity present in this emerging field,” the NCATS Scientific Review Panel said during the review process.
Phase’s in-house LE3D printing technology is designed specifically for the creation of microfluidic devices, which the company claims is a fast-growing $17B industry. According to the firm, its platform utilizes a ‘gold-standard’ biocompatible material that competing 3D printers cannot yet process. The technology is designed to be as accessible as possible, giving non-engineers the ability to design and fabricate their own microfluidic devices with ease.
此外，LE3D可以制造具有高级特征（例如嵌入式凝胶和电极）的多层生物饰面设备。
Rafael Davalos is the professor at Virginia Tech–Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences who will design and test the new microfluidic devices. He adds, “Having diagnostic or electrical devices embedded into 3D printed microfluidic devices has the potential to change the way these tools are created and opens new avenues to their applications.”
Davalos和他的学生计划3 d打印wide variety of microfluidic devices for several different applications, including rare cell isolation and modeling of the blood-brain barrier. The testing of the devices will involve trying to manipulate particles using electrical frequencies.
微流体和3D打印
Phase’s headquarters reside inFirst Turn Innovations，位于北卡罗来纳州科尼利厄斯的工程业务孵化器。在这里，诸如阶段的初创公司可以访问资本和投资者指导，可以帮助商业化新颖的想法。该公司的领导者希望领导微流体行业，包括3D印刷和生物医学工程专家麻省理工学院andUC Berkeley。
尽管如此，阶段并不是唯一针对微流体3D打印的组织。就在这个月多光子光学器件，光刻技术开发人员的子公司Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik, announced its newtwo-photon polymerization (TPP) 3D printer – the MPO 100。该系统专为制造结构的制造而设计，预计该系统将在微流体，生物医学等领域中提供多种应用。
Elsewhere, in the academic sphere, researchers from theUniversity of Bristolrecently developed a novel low-cost and open-source3D printing process for producing microfluidic devices。研究人员的方法仅需要简单的家用设备和标准台式3D打印机，降低了制造微流体的成本和复杂性，使该领域更容易获得。
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Featured image shows Davalos conducting research alongside a student in the lab. Photo via Spencer Roberts of Virginia Tech.
