来自Technical University of Munich(TUM) and theUniversity of Western Australia正在开发由患者自己的细胞制成的3D印刷人造心脏瓣膜，这些心脏瓣会随着个体年龄的增长而生长。
The approach hopes to overcome the drawbacks of conventional prosthetic heart valves, which only last a limited number of years and therefore require multiple replacement surgeries.
Lead by TUM professor Petra Mela and Elena De-Juan-Pardo of the University of Western Australia, the team leveraged a melt electrowriting 3D printing process to create porous scaffolds made up of a patient’s own cells which can grow as the patient does.
Melt electrowriting 3D printing
Melt electrowriting is an advanced additive manufacturing technology capable of depositing predefined micrometric fibers, and works by combining an applied electric field, temperature, and pressure to create a charged jet of molten polymer.
The researchers used the technique to deposit microfibers less than one-tenth the thickness of a human hair with extreme precision in a predefined pattern, giving the resulting fibrous scaffolds “excellent” features.
Melt electrospinning provides significant advantages over other fiber-forming techniques such as conventional electrospinning, as it enables the fabrication of scaffold with tunable mechanical properties, macro-porosities, and patterns for a wide range of applications, including implant tissue engineering and disease modeling.
The technique has been deployed within a biomedical context before, having been used byMITto种植高度均匀的细胞培养物具有特殊的特征和大学医学中心（UMC）UTRECHTto produce3D bioprinted tissuesthat can be implanted into a living joint affected by arthritis.
融化电量也为3D printer with “eyes and brains”developed by the昆士兰州技术大学, which integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to manufacture customized medical implants.
3 d打印技术人工心脏瓣膜
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases are theleading cause of death globally，瓣膜心脏病是全球心血管疾病的第三主要促成者。
Currently, if damaged heart valves cannot be repaired, current treatments involve implanting a prosthetic valve which should ideally remain in the patient for the whole of their lifetime. However, such valves have a limited lifespan and so patients must undergo multiple surgical interventions to replace them. This problem is particularly prevalent in young pediatric patients, as they require new valves as their bodies grow.
The research team’s regenerative approach to heart valve tissue engineering sought to overcome the limitations of current mechanical and biological valve prostheses by fabricating a valve with the ability to grow and remodel with the patient. To achieve this, they needed to print the scaffolds with adequate porosity to enable the cells to infiltrate the structure and thrive.
The team used an in-house melt electrowriting 3D printer to create heart valve implants that mimicked the various tissue structures of an individual patient’s own aortic heart valve. The team’s digital platform 3D printed complex patterns which were then composited with tubular microporous hydrogel scaffolds.
The resulting printed structure was capable of withstanding the demanding functions of a heart valve while remaining porous enough to allow the patient’s own cells to colonize the scaffold and proliferate. The team tested the capabilities of their artificial heart valve by creating a mock circulatory system and subjecting it to the same pressure and flow rates that a natural heart valve would endure.
根据该团队的说法，测试阶段的结果很有希望，阀门满足了ISO标准。尽管结果令人鼓舞，但团队承认测试无法预测阀的长期功能，为此，将进行体内研究以评估脚手架的重塑过程和降解率，以及其他因素。
For now, the researchers see their 3D printed heart valves as demonstrating a “pioneering proof-of-concept” for an off-the-shelf complete heart valve construct that could pave the way for other soft tissue engineering applications.
有关该研究的更多信息可以在标题为：“Spatially heterogeneous tubular scaffolds for in situ heart valve tissue engineering using melt electrowriting,”发表在the Advanced Functional Materials journal. The study is co-authored by N. Saidy, A. Fernandez-Colino, B. Heidari, R. Kent, M. Vernon, O. Bas, S. Mulderrig, A. Lubig, J. Rodriguez-Cabello, B. Doyle, D. Hutmacher, E. De-Juan-Pardo, and P. Mela.
As the capabilities of bioprinting have improved, additive manufacturing has been leveraged for similar heart-related regenerative medicine applications in the past.
早在2020年，来自University of Minnesota与医疗技术公司合作Medtronic开发可定制的3D打印的患者特定心脏瓣膜模型。这些模型旨在帮助外科医生更好地准备最低侵入性的手术程序，以改善心血管患者的结局。
Around the same time, researchers fromCarnegie Mellon University开发了自己的3D生物打印方法来生产全尺寸人类心脏模型for surgical training and planning applications.
最近，来自Chinese Academy of Sciences3D printed abeating heart that remained alive for six monthsusing a six-axis robotic arm converted into a 3D bioprinter. According to the team, the 3D printed cardiac tissue could demonstrate a feasible method of bioprinting functional tissues and organs in the future.
Subscribe to the3D打印行业newsletterfor the latest news in additive manufacturing. You can also stay connected by following us onTwitterand liking us onFacebook.
Looking for a career in additive manufacturing? Visit3D Printing Jobsfor a selection of roles in the industry.
Subscribe to ourYouTube频道for the latest 3D printing video shorts, reviews and webinar replays.
特色图片显示制造3D打印的心脏阀。通过高级功能材料图像。
