PLOS ONE
The growth of the 3D printed ear
Here at Personalize we see a lot of advancements and uses for 3D printing but nothing excites us more than a medicinal application.
Physicians and biomedical engineers at Cornell have created a facsimile, working replica of a human ear, one that can be used to treat children born with a rare condition called microtia. Microtia is a deformity found in up to 4 in 10,000 births per year, the child’s internal ear workings are usually fine but the external structure, which helps capture sound, is either missing or severely deformed.
Currently a replacement ear is often just made of polystyrene like material and therefore not particularly effective in aural capture or is harvested from a child’s rib which is a painful and drawn out process. The widely spread image of the Vacanti mouse, where what appeared to be a human ear was grown on the back of a mouse has not proved successful in the long term.
This new process, pioneered at Weill Cornell Medical College , involves creating a 3D image of an ear, in some cases replicating the other ear, 3D printing a mould of the ear and injecting that mould with animal-derived collagen (like the stuff used in Angelina Jolie’s lips!) and over 250 million cartilage cells.
The ear is the best replacement ear at appearing and behaving like a natural ear, the process of making the ears and is fast, taking about a week at most. The new ear is often placed on a child at around 5-6 years old because by then ears are at about 80% fully grown. Here’s a really neat bit, researchers believe that these ears stand a great chance at growing at the same rate as the other “normal” ear.
The PLOS ONE study’s co-author Dr. Jason Spector says, "These bioengineered ears are highly promising because they precisely mirror the native architecture of the human ear. They should restore hearing and a normal appearance to children and others in need. This advance represents a very exciting collaboration between physicians and basic scientists. It is a demonstration of what we hope to do together to improve the lives of these patients with ear deformity, missing ears and beyond."
The same applies to these bioengineered as does the Robohand and Stratysys’ Magic Arms, when 3D printing is doing good for human kind then you can get genuinely excited about the tech.,
