3D Printing News Alert(3D Printed implant to treat spinal cord injury)

Posted on March 24, 2019 Updated on April 25, 2023

According to a Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Translational Neuroscience Institute at UC San Diego School of Medicine, “Axons are the long, threadlike extensions on nerve cells that reach out to connect to other cells.”
According to Co-senior author Shaochen Chen, Ph.D. Professor of nanoengineering and a faculty member in the Institute of Engineering in Medicine at UC San Diego, “Like a bridge, it aligns regenerating axons from one end of the spinal cord injury to the other. Axons can diffuse and regrow in any direction, but the scaffold keeps axons in order, guiding them in the right direction to complete the spinal cord connection”.
According to co-first author Wei Zhu, Ph.D., nanoengineering postdoctoral fellow, “This shows the flexibility of our 3D printing technology. Vascularization is one of the main obstacles in engineering tissue implants that can last in the body for a long time.”

3D Printed Implant Promotes Nerve Cell Growth to Treat Spinal Cord Injury

 

What challenges do you think need to be overcome in order to make 3D-printed spinal implants more widely available?