Smart gel-based sheet can form 3D Printed Conduit helping non-invasive nerve repair
A new smart gel-based sheet using three-dimensional (3D) printing technology that can self-roll into a tube during surgery to form a nerve conduit could help reduce the complexity of surgeries and aid rapid healing of nerve injuries.
The gold standard for the treatment of peripheral nerve injuries is still autografts. Bioresorbable polymer-based conduits are being explored for clinical use as alternatives. But these treatment strategies suffer from several limitations, such as donor site morbidity in the case of autografts and the necessity for sutures that demand highly skilled microsurgeries, and additional complications posed by sutures.
These clinical shortcomings motivated researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru to design a smart gel-based sheet using three-dimensional (3D) printing technology that can self-roll into a tube during surgery to form a nerve conduit. In 3D printing, a virtual model of the part is created using design software, and the part is then fabricated using a 3D printer by layer-upon-layer deposition of the material. 3D printed parts can further undergo a shape change on demand upon activation after fabrication. Such technologies are now widely known as four-dimensional (4D) printing, where time is the extra dimension.
In a recent study, the team at IISc, led by Professor Kaushik Chatterjee, engineered a bilayered gel sheet by 3D printing in pre-defined patterns from two gels. The gel formulations were selected to swell differently. When the dried gel sheet was immersed in water, it rapidly swelled and curled into a tube. The folding behavior and final shape of the gel could be programmed to generate tubes of desired dimensions, which could be predicted by computational modeling. The gel sheets were then coated with thin nanometer-scale fibers to enable the body’s cells to adhere to the gel sheet.
