Three-dimensional Printing of Customized Bioresorbable Airway Stents

Abstract

Central airway obstruction is a life-threatening disorder causing a high physical and psychological burden to patients due to severe breathlessness and impaired quality of life. Standard-of-care airway stents are silicone tubes, which cause immediate relief, but are prone to migration, especially in growing patients, and require additional surgeries to be removed, which may cause further tissue damage. Customized airway stents with tailorable bioresorbability that can be produced in a reasonable time frame would be highly needed in the management of this disorder. Here, we report poly(D,L lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) methacrylate blends based biomedical inks and their use for the rapid fabrication of customized and bioresorbable airway stents. The 3D printed materials are cytocompatible and exhibit silicone-like mechanical properties with suitable biodegradability. In vivo studies in healthy rabbits confirmed biocompatibility and showed that the stents stayed in place for 7 weeks after which they became radiographically invisible. The developed biomedical inks open promising perspectives for the rapid manufacturing of the customized medical devices for which high precision, tuneable elasticity and predictable degradation are sought after.

Solvent-Free Digital Light 3D Printing using Biodegradable Polymeric Photoinitiators

“…Owing to the amorphous nature of the attached random copolymer chains, both polymers were liquid at room temperature, with Tg of -33.7 °C and -26.5 °C, respectively (Figure 1a). This is consistent with previous reports [51][52] and our recent work [53] on random copolymers. The light absorption of the BAPO polymers was measured in THF (0.1 mM) and compared to the commercial BAPO photoinitiator (Omnicure 819, with previous trade name Irgacure 819).…”

“…To evaluate the 3D printing ability of the BAPO polymers, we synthesized a series of biodegradable macromonomers with Mn,NMR ranging from 1200 to 9100 g mol -1 (MM1k-9k) by copolymerizing DLLA and CL, with subsequent methacrylation to introduce the crosslinkable moieties (Scheme 1, Figures S7 and S8), [53] and tested the miscibility of the BAPO polymers with the macromonomers. As shown in Figure 1c, the mixture of P1 and the macromonomers, produced a transparent solvent-free photoresin.…”

Challenges and Opportunities in 3D Printing of Biodegradable Medical Devices by Emerging Photopolymerization Techniques

“…Recently, new opportunities have arisen with the emergence of heat-assisted vat photopolymerization (Figure 2b). [27,68,69] Seppälä and co-workers employed heat during the SLA 3D printing of PCL tissue scaffolds in 2011. [42] With working temperatures around 43-46 °C, they carried out the solvent-free 3D printing of PCL methacrylate with MW of 1550 g mol -1 .…”

Recent Progress in Active Mechanical Metamaterials and Construction Principles

“…[51,261,262] 3) The applications in giant machinery, such as, aerospace, including smart load-bearing and anti-impact structures, [1,27,46,181,263] morphing airfoils, [264] acoustic stealth cloaks, [48,[225][226][227] elastic mechanical cloaks, [48] reconfigurable antenna, [24,180,265,266] terahertz metadevices, [267] electromagnetic stealth system. [268][269][270] 4) The applications in biomedicine include electronic skin, [258,[271][272][273][274][275] tissue engineering, [192,194,[276][277][278][279][280] vascular stents, [54,136,[281][282][283] drug delivery carriers. [136,210,284,285] From the above discussion, the rich functions and application value of AMMs have brought great convenience to human production and life.…”