3-D printing already aiding thousands of patients worldwide

CLEVELAND: A futuristic world of personalized medicine is becoming reality for thousands of patients thanks to 3-D printing and Materialise NV, said Maarten Zandbergen, the company’s global services manager.

More than 150,000 patients have been helped by Leuven, Belgium-based Materialise, which offers rapid prototyping and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software development for medical and industrial applications, Zandbergen said in his keynote address at the fifth annualPlastics News Plastics in Medical Devices conference May 6-8 in Cleveland.

The company takes two dimensional “slices of a person” from MRI or CT scans and feeds them to their proprietary software to build a virtual 3-D model. From there, a surgeon can explore different craniomaxillofacial and orthopedic surgical options, practice the surgery and use a 3-D printer to produce a truly unique device that is created specifically for that patient. Materialise also prints patient-specific jigs to guide the surgeon’s drill or saw to make exactly the same cuts they practiced virtually. The result is reduced surgery time, more accurate cuts, a more personalized process for the patient, Zandbergen said. 

Materialise also works with orthopedic device partners such as Biomet, Zimmer, DePuy and others to combine a standard joint replacement parts with a collaborative, personalized process, he said.

For some applications, 3-D printing still has a long way to go. There are a lot of universities doing excellent research, Zandbergen said, but printing things like working organs is “in the distant future.”

“I think we’ll have to take it steps at a time,” he said. “It’s a giant leap going from printing an inactive material like plastic or metal to living cells.” Starting with something simpler, like skin, rather than a human heart would be a good way to start, Zandbergen said.

There are also some polymer challenges to be overcome for the 3-D printing of medical devices, he said.  Materialise has a research and development team in Belgium and the company works closely with its suppliers, but “any material that has a potential to be 3-D printed, I’m more than happy to talk to suppliers about potential collaboration,” Zandbergen said, especially if it’s a material that can stand up to the extensive sterilization processes required of implantables.

Courtesy: Kitco News