Engineering has taken another great step into the field of medicine with tissue regeneration through 3D printing. If you hadn’t yet heard, doctors and engineers have been partnering for several years to combat the age-old question of human regeneration. Through many trials and errors, they have successfully created a 3D-printed scaffolding with bioactive glass. This scaffolding supports the growth of bone tissue to aid in the body’s natural process of bone regeneration. As the body begins to regenerate the bone tissue, the scaffolding slowly begins to disintegrate and is absorbed, leaving nothing but the newly regenerated bone.
Bioactive glass contains calcium and sodium and is made from a synthetic material called phosphosilicate, which – since inorganic – has an almost limitless supply. Corporations around the world are seeing the opportunity provided by this new technology and are readily building up their portfolios for when bioactive glass becomes a common medical material. This revolutionary medical technology can be implemented in many different medical procedures including surgery, dental implants, and medical implants with the added benefit of patient-specific proportions.
One such company that sees the future implications of bioactive glass is Mo-Sci. One of the top producers of bioactive glass, Mo-Sci prides themselves on being experts in high-tech glass development. As stated by Steve Jung, the CTO at Mo-Sci, “Since it is inorganic, we have essentially a limitless supply; you can always make more, whereas bone or other types of materials used in medical applications need cadaver- or patient-supplied bone, and sometimes there’s not enough.”
This artificial material is both plentiful and not very costly, which means we’ll likely be seeing more research conducted in the field, as well as many more success stories in the news. Keep your eyes peeled; in the next few years we could be reaching grand new levels of modern technology in the medical field, and we’ll all be here to witness this exciting development of the future.
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