3-D Printer Used to Make Bone-Like Material

 Washington State University researchers have used a 3-D printer for a bone-like material and structure that can be used in orthopedic procedures, dental work to create and deliver drugs to treat osteoporosis. Compared with the actual bone, it acts as a scaffold for new bone to grow and eventually disappear without apparent side effects.

The authors report on a successful in vitro tests in the journal Dental Materials, and says that they are already promising results with in vivo tests in rats and rabbits. It is possible that doctors will be able to custom order replacement bone for a few years, said Susmita Bose, co-author and professor in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

"If a doctor has a CT scan of a defect, we can convert it to a CAD file and create the scaffold on the basis of the defect," Bose said.

The material comes from a four-year interdisciplinary efforts in chemistry, materials science, biology and production. An important conclusion of the paper is that the addition of silicon and zinc over the strength of the main material, calcium phosphate doubled.

The researchers - which includes mechanical and materials engineering professor Amit Bandyopadhyay, PhD student and research assistant Gary Fielding Solaiman Tarafder - even a year long there is a commercially available 3-D printer Prometal designed to make metal objects.

The printer works by spraying a jet having a plastic binder on a bed of powder in layers of 20 microns, about half the width of a human hair. Following instructions from a computer, it creates a channeled cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser.

After only one week in a medium containing immature human bone cells, it was the scaffold supporting a network of new bone cells.

The research was funded by a $ 1500000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.