Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2018

Collaborative research by Cedarville senior biomedical engineers and the school of pharmacy shows that 3D printing of human tissue scaffolds has tremendous potential for regrowing bone. Their research was published by the Orthopedic Research Society (ORS) this March. 3D p r i n t i ng i s c ommon l y associated with the industrial design field, where printers are used to create prototypes or actual parts for cars, planes, and machinery or scale architectural and other types of models. Now 3D printing is being employed to recreate human organs and bone-building scaffolds. The biomedical engineering s t u d e n t s w o r k i n g o n t h i s project are Mitchell Ryan ’18 (Hopkins, Michigan), Da n i e l S i d l e ’ 1 8 (Ma c e don i a , Oh i o ) , S t e ph a n Smith ’18 (Prompton Plains, New Jersey), Jacob Cole ’18 (Sidney, Maine), Tierra Martinelli ’18 (Cincinnati, Ohio) and Sarah Seman ’21 (Delmont, Pennsylvania). According to Tim Norman, Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, biomedical engineering and pharmacy students are using a 3D printer to produce a scaffold. Polylactic acid is used in the printer; it is a biocompatible and biodegradable substance. The scaffold is a framework with which the cells will easily inhabit and mimics the body tissue being regrown. The scaffold is submerged into a liquid growth media full of normal endothelial cells that will attach to the scaffold and reproduce. The biomedical engineering design group is partnering with Rocco Rotello, Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, to culture human cells in the pharmaceutical science laboratory. Ideally, the cell-enriched scaffold would be implanted into the body to eventually regrow the missing tissue. The scaffold is reabsorbed by the patient’s body, while the cells produce the new tissue. “The biomedical field is growing and moving so quickly, and this project reveals the interdisciplinary nature of this field extremely well,” Norman said. “It shows our students that collaborative work with other disciplines is necessary for successful biomedical engineering projects.” Cedarville began this research in 2015 and is still in the early stages of the research process. The biomedical engineering department’s research paper about the material properties of 3D printed scaffolds was published in March 2018 at the ORS annual meeting in New Orleans. The end goal of this research is to design a scaffold that supports cell life and represents the tissue it is meant to replace. Cedarville Researches 3D Human Tissue Printing CAMPUS NEWS 38 | Cedarville Magazine