3D printing used to create nose cartilage

The team at the University of Alberta used a specially designed hydrogel that can be mixed with cells harvested from a patient, then printed in a specific shape captured through 3D imaging. The material is then cultured in a lab over several weeks to become functional cartilage.

“It takes a lifetime to make cartilage in an individual, while this method takes about four weeks,” said Adetola Adesida, a professor of surgery in the university’s Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. “So you still expect that there will be some degree of maturity that it has to go through, especially when implanted in the body. But functionally it’s able to do the things that cartilage does.”

Adesida led the study, published in The FASEB Journal, with Yaman Boluk, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering, and graduate student Xiaoyi Lan. Their aim is to provide a better solution for surgeons to safely restore the features of skin cancer patients living with nasal cartilage defects after surgery.