Tens of thousands of people in the U.S. are awaiting an organ donation, and researchers at the Ohio State University hope to someday be able to help. They are studying the possibility of 3D printing inside the body.

 

The goal is to print materials, including living cells that will repair segments of an organ, tissue, and many many years from now, maybe even build an entire kidney.

 

Minimally invasive robotic surgery has been life-changing for patients— shortening recovery times and reducing complications. 

 

Now researchers at Ohio State want to take this technology to the next level by adding a tool that could 3D print biomaterials inside the body.

 

"Not entire organs but sections of an organ and trying to do some kind of basic biological repair there," explained David Hoelzle, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who is leading the research.

 

The tool would build a biomaterial scaffold with tethered cells, drugs, and or growth factors to repair or replace damaged tissue. 

 

It's called tissue engineering, and there is no need for a tissue transplant or donation.

 

"So that usually involves building some sort of construct that has the approximate biological, chemical and mechanical properties of that organ and letting the body have cells infiltrate that structure and then create this into a new functioning organ that's the big big picture," Hoelzle said.

 

There could potentially be multiple applications for this surgical device. Right now, they're looking at soft tissue like in the kidney, liver, gut area, bladder, and muscle. 

 

"Something that maybe had to be removed because you had to remove a cancerous legion, something of that manner. It could also be looking at regrowing blood vessels at a certain region that's necrotic," he described.

 

Other possibilities include building surgical meshes to repair hernias and filling in gaps during a wedge resection of a liver.

 

"Where they basically leave a section either completely removed and nothing filling it or they just suture that wedge back up and really how we can use biomaterials to fill in those large gaps or those small gaps or also printing on top of tissues to deliver some sort of therapeutic benefit," he said.

 

Many many years from now, the tool could maybe even build an organ.

 

"The big picture is eventually we want to build an entire kidney, but I think there's a lot of things we're focused on now that are simpler and also more readily attainable right now that I think we can start to look at."

 

Current efforts in the field of tissue engineering are not centered around minimally invasive surgery— they require the structures to be implanted through open, invasive surgeries.

 

So this project combines the fields of robotic surgery, tissue engineering, and 3D printing.

 

"Three kinds of mature technologies and saying alright, we have kind of this niche where we think we can deliver benefit here by kind of combining the idea of being able to print directly on the end of a surgical robotic system." 

 

A prototype tool has been built in their lab and needs to be refined for surgeons to be able to control it. 

 

The next step is to test it out in a surgical simulator in two and a half years. If that's successful, animal studies will probably be five years from now.

 

"So now the main thing is to put this all together, and once we start to demonstrate this in a surgical simulator, then you can convince someone we hope, then we have the ability we hope to convince someone to actually fund the next level of development."