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Robot Skin 3D Printer Close to First-in-Human Clinical Trials

In just two years a robotic device that prints a patient’s own skin cells directly onto a burn or wound could have its first-in-human clinical trials. The 3D bioprinting system for intraoperative skin regeneration developed by Australian biotech start-up Inventia Life Science has gained new momentum thanks to major investments from the Australian government and two powerful new partners, world-renowned burns expert Fiona Wood and leading bioprinting researcher Gordon Wallace.

Codenamed Ligō from the Latin “to bind”, the system is expected to revolutionize wound repairs by delivering multiple cell types and biomaterials rapidly and precisely, creating a new layer of skin where it has been damaged. The novel system is slated to replace current wound healing methods that simply attempt to repair the skin, and is being developed by Inventia Skin, a subsidiary of Inventia Life Science.

“When we started Inventia Life Science, our vision was to create a technology platform with the potential to bring enormous benefit to human health. We are pleased to see how fast that vision is progressing alongside our fantastic collaborators. This Federal Government support will definitely help us accelerate even faster,” said Dr. Julio Ribeiro, CEO, and co-founder of Inventia.

Seeking to support Australia’s biomedical and medical technology sector, the Australian government announced it will invest AU$1 million (US$723,085) to supercharge the Ligõ 3D bioprinting system for regenerating skin. The project is one of 21 initiatives to receive support from the Federal Government’s BioMedTech Horizons (BMTH) program, operated by MTPConnect, a non-profit organization aiming to accelerate the rate of growth of the medical technologies, biotechnologies, and pharmaceuticals sector in Australia.

Late in July 2020, Australia’s Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt announced that the program’s funding is expected to move the device faster into first-in-human clinical trials. Separately, the team also received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund Stem Cell Therapies Mission to collaborate with stem cell expert Pritinder Kaur from Curtin University, in Perth, to use the Ligō device to deliver stem cell-based products that could improve skin regeneration.

According to Inventia, the skin is the first point of injury in accidents and some diseases and, when significantly damaged, it heals slowly, usually leaving a scar. Moreover, throughout the regeneration process, it is open to infection, a major problem in the body’s first protective barrier, and a good enough reason to find new ways to speed up the healing process.

Focusing energies on creating a robot capable of printing tiny droplets containing the patient’s skin cells and biomaterials directly on the wound gave Inventia the potential to recreate functional and aesthetically normal skin. Moreover, the researchers behind the Ligõ technology suggest this can be achieved in a single procedure in the operating theatre, reducing treatment cost and hospital stays, and minimizing the risk of infection.

The device uses Inventia’s patented technology, which was already successfully featured in its RASTRUM platform for lab-based medical research and drug discovery. By taking this core technology into the clinic through the Ligō robot, the company expects to break new ground with some of Australia’s leaders in skin regeneration.

Researchers from Inventia Life Science at the Translational Research Initiative for Cell Engineering and Printing (TRICEP) at Wollongong. (Image courtesy of TRICEP)

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) at the University of Wollongong, in Australia, will also lend their internationally renowned expertise in bioinks to develop the new 3D bioprinting system to treat burns during surgery. Led by ACES Director Gordon Wallace, the researchers will provide critical input in the bioprinter and bioink development process. This news comes as no surprise as the ACES team already had a strong working relationship with Inventia.

“ACES is at the forefront of building new approaches to 3D printing, and this project will draw on this significant success we have had in this space in recent years,” Wallace said. “3D printing has emerged as the most exciting advance in fabrication in decades, and I’m excited to continue to build our local capabilities in this area to establish a new, innovative and sustainable industry for the Illawarra [a region in the Australian state of New South Wales]. Being part of this skin regeneration project will help to put Wollongong on the map for the commercial manufacture of bioprinting technologies.”

Leading bioprinting researcher Gordon Wallace. (Image courtesy of the ARC Center for Excellence for Electromaterials Science)

For project partner Fiona Wood, a world-leading burns specialist and surgeon, and Director of the Burns Service of Western Australia, this is not the first time that she has looked towards bioengineering to help her patients. In the early 90s, the expert pioneered the innovative “spray-on skin” technique, which greatly reduces permanent scarring in burns victims, and came to notice in 2002, when the largest proportion of survivors from the Bali bombings arrived at Royal Perth Hospital.

“The combination of these grants is an excellent example of the way the Medical Research Future Fund is being applied across the continuum of translational research to commercialization, leading to better patient outcomes,” commented Wood.

Fiona Wood at the Burns Service of Western Australia. (Image credit Fiona Woods Foundation)

Burns are the fourth most common type of trauma worldwide, with an estimated 11 million burned patients treated every year worldwide, and over 300,000 deaths resulting from serious wounds. In Australia alone Wood’s foundation reported that 200,000 people suffer burns annually, costing the Australian community over AU$150 million per year. Burn injuries are horrific and they present complex problems for both the patient and clinicians to deal with, with a road to recovery beyond easy to tackle. Inventia Skin expects bioprinting technology will be a game-changer in wound medicine. Moreover, the combined expertise of leading specialists in bioprinting and burn wounds, along with funding and support from the local government could lead to one of the most innovative 3D bioprinting systems to treat burns during surgery, and best of all, it could be available in 2022.

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An Inside Look into the ACES Lab (Part II: TRICEP)

After peeking into some of the research labs at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), located at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) in Australia’s University of Wollongong (UOW) Innovation Campus, thanks to a virtual tour by Gordon Wallace, Executive Director of ACES, audiences were able to get a first-hand look into another building at UOW. In the second part of the tour, Wallace showed the recently inaugurated Translational Research Initiative for Cell Engineering and Printing (TRICEP) and how it is leading the initiative for 3D bioprinting, encompassing bioinks, bioprinters, and bioprinting process developments, including the manufacturing of medical devices and the integration of living cells delivered using customized bioprinters to address specific medical challenges, and ultimately how they will scale up production of each of this innovations.

At TRICEP, scientists are using fundamental advances in materials science and engineering to solve real applications. The new facility was created last year to translate the advances into a manufacturable prototype or commercial product.

During this second part of the tour, Wallace explored the development of bioinks and bioprinters that will be commercially manufactured in the future, which is why the focus is more on material applications and protocol development for the manufacture of the bioinks and customized printers. A big part of what the researchers do involves exciting new developments to address very critical medical challenges, which in turn, create a commercial opportunity, according to Wallace.

“This is a great facility that incorporates the development of bioprinters, something you won’t find in a conventional university research environment, and we are taking all those 3D printing processes and making them ready for manufacture by implementing a quality management system that alows us to reallize real commercial opportunities,” suggested Wallace.

BIOINKS

The fundamental formulation for the bioinks developed come from the IPRI lab (as seen in the first part of the virtual tour), and TRICEP researchers need to use the new facility to scale it up and make it into a reliable product, but now without some challenges. Alexander Martyn, a Synthesis and Fabrication Chemist at TRICEP, is leading the bioink revolution and said: “Everything related to upscaling is a lot different here because we have to explore every single parameter of the experiments so that when we make the larger batches of bioink, they are reliable.” 

“We usually need to go back to the source of the material. For some of the research work, small scale is easy to achieve, but here you need to know the primary source of the material to ensure quality control. Before we start making a large scale production of the bioink we have to undergo a suite of characterization to determine a high purity, which basically means determining if it is a very good product for us to work with. So first we would characterize the material to ensure the qualities and then we turn it into the bioink,” said Martyn.

Alexander Martyn showing how the 10-liter reactor works

“We start with small scale reactions, that give us between 20 and 50 grams in scale, much more than the one gram that is used for research. And then we turn to our bioreactors, one of them is a 10-liter reactor, capable of generating quantities of upto 500 grams. It is controlled by a thermoregulation unit plummerd throug the external wallls, so that we can control the temperature and collect the material. We also have a 20 litre reactor, capable of producing kilogram batches, which is the big leap into an industrial process,” he went on.

PRINTING PRINTERS

At TRICEP, researchers are using conventional 3D printers to create a range of customized 3D printers which help them address important research challenges in the medical spheres and built new tools to train the next generation of biofabricators.

Stephen Beirne, Additive Fabrication Capabilities Head at TRICEP, explained that “one of our capabilities includes printing printers. We have a range of additive fabrication tools and have recently been able to expand, even more, acquiring a Mimaki 3D printer that allows us attain components in full-colour representations, that gives more detail so that our collaborators and commercial partners get real realizations on the parts they want to produce. Overall, these systems enable us to print new components for new printing systems.”

TRICEP is a 100 percent owned University of Wollongong initiative that draws on expertise and facilities available within ACES and the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) Materials Node, both based at the UOW Innovation Campus. It houses a range of additive manufacturing technologies, including the highest resolution metal printer in Australia and the country’s leading biofabrication capability to develop biomaterials, with teams producing specialized 3D printing devices and customized bioinks to treat specific medical conditions, such as wound healing and artificial skin for burn victims.

Scaling manufacture of 3D bioprinters (Image credit: TRICEP)

TRICEP can commercialize opportunities in 3D bioprinting including printer manufacturing, biomaterials, bioinks, and material-cellular combinations to address significant industry challenges that require an exclusive, tailored solution, bringing to life novel technology from concept stage through to prototyping and manufacture of hardware and the formulation of customized bioinks to accelerate product development and rapidly decrease time to market.

Professionals at the TRICEP facility are creating and developing prototypes, making sure that these are ready to be manufactured at scale. Instead of making devices and integrating those into commercial type platforms, they are developing their own customized platforms for clinical challenges at hand, that allow for additional functionalities, such as to incorporate additional extruder or deposition techniques simultaneously as well as cross-linking methods. 

For example, they are developing a series of handheld devices that are ideal for practical use in a clinical environment. Beirne described that “to characterize the device as we are going into our experimental protocols it is ideal to be able to transfer our mounting system into a tri-axis stage or even a five-axis stage, to have fine control over the scaffold and structures that we produce, to then be able to determine the repeatability and the consistency of the printing system we have developed.”

And the best part is, they have a whole suite of these, like the iFix pen, a cornea-correcting device created in collaboration with ACES at UOW. Beirne uses metal additive fabrication, basically, two selective laser melting systems, the first has a cylindrical build volume with a maximum built height of 74 mm (probably Trumpf or Sisma), while the newest and most recent system they added to the facility is a Concept Laser that allows printing volumes of 100mm x 100mm x 100 mm. They can also print in a range of different metals, like stainless steel and titanium, allowing for high resolution, low surface roughness components that are ideal for customized prototypes. He said that some of these structures are difficult to make with conventional manufacture devices.

“Some of the printers we created have also become educational printers and are an important part of our online teaching program. We have a graduate certificate on biofabrication which is available now, and that is the course work necessary to move to to the masters of biofabrication and it is exposure to this type of printers that give high level and state-of-the-art training in 3D printing. So that our prospective engineers and bioengineers have a range of tools and capabilities for them to learn, from the fundamentals of the 3D positioning systems all the way to the development of the mechanical extrusion mechanism and temperature management to allow them to see what happens to different materials and temperature conditions, printing conditions or extrusion parameters,” said Wallace.

Researcher working at the lab (Image credit: TRICEP)

One last customized printer to look at during the tour is 3D Alek, the bioprinter that replicates human ears for patients with microtia, built in collaboration with Payal Mukherjee, a nose and throat surgeon and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney School of Medicine. All of the components were built at the facility and it is able to print three different materials, each having their individual printing speed and condition. 

The in-house ability of TRICEP researchers to develop both customized hardware and bioinks, as well as the growing clinical network, makes them uniquely placed to help companies create a complete end product that is tailor-made to combat a specific medical challenge. In addition, their extensive medical network throughout Australia helps them develop clinically relevant systems and protocols.

“All the projects are driven by real clinical needs, we are very fond of working with clinicians around the country who are really defining the challenges with us, and implementing a plan with us, and then helping us in terms of translation,” said Wallace.

You can tune in to see the second part of the virtual lab tour here.

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An Inside Look into the ACES Lab (Part I)

A leading scientist in the field of electromaterials and one of Australia’s visionary bioprinting enthusiasts Gordon Wallace took audiences through a virtual tour into the cutting edge research labs at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), where next-generation materials research and advanced engineering for the development of customized bioinks and bioprinters take place. Located within the heart of the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at Australia’s University of Wollongong (UOW) Innovation Campus, ACES turns fundamental knowledge into the next generation of smart devices to improve people’s lives and deal with some of the great challenges of the century.

With his usual enthusiasm, Wallace engaged audiences as he presented fellow researchers at work and some of the new innovations, discoveries and development of new materials for use in the field of biofabrication. During the first part of the tour, he explores the development of Graphene, 3D printed stents, and cell preparation for bioprinting. For the second part of the tour (found in a separate article), Wallace walks into another building at UOW where the recently inaugurated Translational Research Initiative for Cell Engineering and Printing (TRICEP) is leading the initiative for 3D bioprinting encompassing bioink, bioprinter, and bioprinting process developments, including the manufacturing of medical devices and the integration of living cells delivered using customized bioprinters to address specific medical challenges.

“Here at ACES we are known for our fundamental work into the discovery and the development of new materials, that can be used in energy and medical bionics,” said Wallace. “We are using the most advanced methods of fabrication to develop protocols that will enable structures and devices to be created so that we can take those fundamental advances and use them in important areas.”

Starting with the basics, Wallace first explores a lab setting where Sanjeev Gambhir, a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) of the University of Wollongong, develops graphene, a material he refers to as “wondrous”, with “amazing properties for the nanoworld that we have been able to extricate into the micro and macroscopic realms to realize applications.” 

“To create a graphene-polymer composite synthesis, we modify the chemistries of graphene (which is derived from graphite, a naturally occurring mineral) so that we retain all the amazing mechanical, electric and biological properties and yet make it processible, that is, to turn it into structures and devices, using 3D printing, and eventually making it scalable,” said Gambhir.

Wallace added that “it is important that all the chemistries we use are actually scalable.” He claims that it is very different doing chemistry on a bench from processing graphene into tens of grams and managing to retain the same properties and quality as they were getting on the laboratory scale. It is all part of his vision to really make the process ready for industrial-scale manufacturing.

To show how graphene is turned into fibers for easier handling, Wallace takes audiences to the Fibre Spinning Electrodes area, where researcher Javad Foroughi, “weaves the magic” to create graphene fibers, that can even be combined with biomaterials to coat the surface of the fiber.

Working on customized 3D printed stents was Ali Jeirani, a Product Designer Development Specialist at UOW. It is one of the many processes where he uses 3D printing and takes advantage of all of the advances in material synthesis and processability at ACES, by turning them into real structures. 

“One of the important parts about the properties of a stent for applications is the design. We use G-code to create different designs and then send them to our machine to print different structures and properties,” explained Jeirani. “One of the problems of commercial stents is that they cannot be personalized for the patient, so by using 3D printing, we can customize it according to the scan of the patient. We understand that there can be very complicated stent shapes that are readily realized with 3D printing.”

According to Wallace, the graphene is often blended with other materials to improve the properties of the part, and by using small amounts of graphene and blending it with a polymer, they can create the stent. The innovative material gives the stent extra mechanical properties and could even impart electrical properties into it, which the two experts consider “one of the most interesting properties of graphene for electro stimulation”. 

“This is all made possible thanks to additive fabrication and advances in 3D printing, so it is an exciting time, since we can turn fundamental discoveries into really practical and useful structures almost immediately by working together, us at the 3D fabrication lab and our colleagues at materials processes,” continued Jeirani.

Gordon Wallace and Ali Jeirani looking into how to fabricate 3D printed stents

After delving into advancements in biomaterials and graphene, Wallace headed upstairs to the cell lab where Research Fellow at ACES, Eva Tomaskovic-Crook, revealed another important part of their work: the integration of living cells into printing protocols, which basically entails how scientists prepare the cells for printing.

They have several environments ready for the cells, from storing them in liquid nitrogen sample storage tanks–they have at least two Taylor Wharton LS750– to incubating them, which offer an environment where they nurture cells and provide the right growth conditions to expand. Incubators have a warm 37-degree environment ideal for maintaining cell growth. 

“Quality control of our cells is very important. We need to be sure that the cells maintain the ability to be pluripotent (pluripotent stem cells have the ability to undergo self-renewal and to give rise to all cells of the tissues of the body). We want to scale up the number of cells and to encapsulate them in the biomaterial.” suggested Tomaskovic-Crook.

Scaling up the number of cells is crucial because when they go into the bioprinting process they want to create a three-dimensional tissue with a high cell to biomaterial mass, not just have a few cells. According to the specialist, “it involves a process of going back and forth: scaling up the cells at the lab, then printing them, and bringing them back to the lab to interrogate the cells and see if they are still living, proliferating and turning into the cells we want them to.” 

Gordon Wallace and Eva Tomaskovic-Crook talking about preparing cells for bioprinting 

Known for their expertise in advanced materials and device fabrication, ACES incorporates collaborators from across Australia and the world. ACES is generating options for the future, so being able to peek into some of the advanced materials and device fabrication for game-changing health and energy solutions is a privilege. Not only did Wallace explain some of the most breakthrough research in biomedicine, but he also showed viewers the machines that researchers work with on a daily basis. Wallace tends to emphasize that a big part of the Australian bioprinting community is about sharing research, insights, and knowledge to advance the field. The unique landscape of the country, with its cultural and linguistic diversity as well as residence to scientists from around the globe, makes it ideal for ideas and creativity to emerge.

You can tune in to see the first part of the virtual lab tour here.

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Interview with Gordon Wallace on Bioprinting Solutions to Medical Challenges

In a race to combat very specific medical challenges, Gordon Wallace has developed groundbreaking and bespoke advances in bioprinting, both in specialized 3D printing devices and customized bioinks. Along with fellow researchers at the University of Wollongong (UOW), in Australia, working with clinicians and institutions, they seek to find solutions for rare conditions, like microtia, schizophrenia, epilepsy, as well as for more common afflictions, including corneal ulcerations and damaged cartilage.

A distinguished professor at UOW, Wallace, has been working in bioprinting for the past 25 years with a background in materials science. His first foray into biotechnology was developing new electrode materials for Graeme Clark’s pioneer multi-channel Cochlear Implant for severe-to-profound deafness, and in developing those new materials Wallace realized that conventional fabrication wasn’t good enough, which quickly sparked an interest in developing new 3D printing techniques.

“We have been fortunate because all of our projects and research have been driven by our incredible clinician network throughout the country,” explained Wallace to 3DPrint.com during an interview. “This is a highly interdisciplinary field, so through collaborative efforts bioprinting has advanced a lot. Our collaboration spans from timely producers of materials, like seaweed farmers–we extract the molecules form this type of algae and use it as a source of our bioink–right through the materials processing in mechatronic engineering, designing and building applications with cell technologists and medical specialists.”

Gordon Wallace

Wallace has been identifying and customizing materials and bioprinters to deliver solutions like the BioPen for cartilage regeneration, the iFix Pen to treat corneal ulceration, bioprinter 3D Alek to reproduce the complex geometry of an external ear, leading a project to reproduce brain cells and even developed a specialist Pancreatic Islet Cell Transplantation (PICT) bioprinter. Most of the developments are taking place at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), where Wallace is Executive Director; the Translational Research Initiative for Cellular Engineering and Printing (TRICEP), which also has the expert as Director, and the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) Materials Node, based at the UOW Innovation Campus. The university and its partner institutes have quickly become some of the go-to-places for medical bioprinting advances. TRICEP is a 100% owned initiative of the UOW and can commercialize opportunities in 3D bioprinting including printer manufacturing, biomaterials, bioinks, and material-cellular combinations to address significant industry challenges that require an exclusive, tailored solution; it even houses a range of additive manufacturing technologies, including the highest resolution metal printer in Australia and the country’s leading biofabrication capability to develop biomaterials.

Back in 2014, Wallace along with researchers at the Department of Surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne used stem cells to build 3D structures to encourage the formation of cartilage in human tissues claiming they were on the cusp of reaching their goal: “true cartilage regeneration.” Soon after, a team led by Wallace developed the BioPen, which allows surgeons to use a hand-held co-axial 3D printer pen filled with stem cell ink to ‘draw’ new cartilage into damaged knees in the middle of a surgical procedure, providing practitioners with greater control over joint repairs, and reduce surgery time. 

“The BioPen will eventually repair damaged bones, muscles and tendons, and reduce the need for joint replacements by regenerating cartilage, which we have already done in preliminary studies in animals. During this year and the next, we hope to lead some preclinical studies, and if those turn out to be successful the plan is to move into clinical trials with Professor Peter Choong, Director of Orthopaedics at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. Repairing the cartilage in the knee is pretty huge in Australia because it is a sports oriented country with a big demand, especially in younger patients that might have suffered a sports-related injury, and thanks to this, they could avoid osteoarthritis later in life,” explained Wallace.

Gordon Wallace and the BioPen

Soon, other clinicians became interested in the utility of the BioPen, thinking it could be applicable to other medical disciplines, such as for treating wounds and ulcers in the eye. Gerard Sutton, Ophthalmic Surgeon and Professor of Corneal and Refractive Surgery at the Save Sight Institute, at the University of Sydney’s School of Medicine, noticed what Wallace was doing and thought that he could print a different kind of ink directly into the eye. They soon started working together to revolutionise the treatment of corneal ulceration by developing the iFix Pen, which delivers a special bioink formulation that has the capacity to facilitate healing and prevent infection in treating the disease, which causes severe eye pain, visual morbidity and visual loss, and accounts for 55,000 hospital admissions in Australia every year. The exciting new collaborative corneal bioengineering program started in 2017 and was awarded over 780 thousand US dollars for research and development. Animal testing is already underway.

The iFix Pen by Gordon Wallace and Gerard Sutton

“At the lab we use both stem cells and biomaterials. The source of the cells varies depending on the clinical application that we are pursuing, as well as the different kinds of combinations of biomaterials that constitute the bioink wich also depends upon the patient. The choice is driven by the clinical application, while optimizing performance in that specific biological environment requires a different combination of cells and materials for bioinks,” he continued.

Another very specific project is the development of a custom 3D bioprinter dedicated specifically to treating microtia, a congenital deformity that results in an underdeveloped external ear. Named 3D Alek, the machine was recently installed at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA), in Sydney, since it was done in collaboration with associate professor and Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon at RPA, Payal Mukherjee, who treats a lot of kids who have the disease. According to Wallace, Mukherjee’s vision was to create a 3D printed external ear. Ultimately, the goal is to 3D print a living ear using a patient’s own stem cells, something the team is developing now. 

Gordon Wallace and frequent collaborator Payal Mukherjee

“But bioprinting is not without some challenges, which are still in optimizing the cells and material combinations for particular applications. Also, a general challenge in 3D printed structures for tissue regeneration is the ability to encourage vascularization of that structure so that bigger defects can be treated. I believe that it is a challenge that many groups around the world, including our own, are concerned about,” suggested Wallace. 

Challenge or no challenge, Wallace is hard at work. At the UOW Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI), which he founded and also directs, Jeremy Crook, Associate Professor at UOW and ACES, is leading a project to reproduce brain cells through bioprinting, to study conditions like schizophrenia, epilepsy, and depression. 

“Driven by clinical need, we are really interested in how diseases like epilepsy and schizophrenia develop, and one way to try and get some insights into that is to be able to 3D bioprint stem cells from the patient and try to create functional neural networks on the bench to understand how those diseases develop, as well as to gain insight into that little bit of tissue we created with bench research to test interventions, such as pharmaceutical.”

A few years back Crook and Wallace indicated that many neuropsychiatric disorders result from an imbalance of key chemicals called neurotransmitters, which are produced by specific nerve cells in the brain. Defective serotonin and GABA-producing nerve cells are implicated in schizophrenia and epilepsy while defective dopamine-producing cells are involved in Parkinson’s disease, so the team started using 3D printing and bioink to make neurones involved in producing GABA and serotonin, as well as support cells called neuroglia.

More recently, ACES researchers developed a bioprinter to help people with Type 1 diabetes, the Pancreatic Islet Cell Transplantation (PICT) 3D Printer, which works by delivering insulin-producing islet cells and is now in use at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH), where Wallace and his team collaborated with RAH Professor of Medicine Toby Coates. They are planning to improve the effectiveness of islet cell transplants by encapsulating donated islet cells in a 3D printed structure, to protect them during and after transplantation. But that’s not all, many more projects are on the way, including wound healing with Chris Baker, head of dermatology at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne working with ACES on clinical trials; printed structures to understand airway collapse and prevention with Stuart MacKay, surgeon and Clinical Professor in Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at UOW, and even bioprinting in space, which is something Wallace says they “were recently approached about”.

“We just started to think about the ability to 3D print and create things on demand in remote locations, like space, it is an ideal application and something we are very interested in pursuing. For now, I have no real experience about how microgravity will affect bioprinting, but what an exciting experiment that would be,” claimed the expert.

According to the expert, it has taken a while to build the global collaborative network they now have, but it all seems to be coming to fruition, even some of the more complex aspects of bioprinting, like discussions about regulatory issues, something Wallace is quite involved in, as well as the engagement in ethical issues that might arise. 

“In this area, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has been very proactive in engaging with the research, commercial and clinical community in order to try to formulate an appropriate regulatory framework that can accommodate 3D bioprinting in Australia. They are aware that the technology is moving very fast, so they want to make sure that everything is in place,” continued Wallace.

As part of the thriving academic environment at UOW, Wallace is a professor of post-graduate courses, where he noticed an increase in student interest in STEM careers and biotechnology for the last few years.

“3D printing has already revolutionized the connections between science, engineering and mathematics and our ability to be incredibly creative and make new structures. But although our courses are in high demand and even our online platform to learn about 3D printing of body parts has been popular with over 30.000 students, I still think there will be a gap between the demand and supply of professionals to fill the biotechnology positions needed for future jobs,” Wallace stated. “There is a big gap at the moment, and it will take many years to recover, so we need to engage children in the early years of school, all the way through to university.”

Gordon Wallace at ACES with the BioPen

“Today I can say that what really changed in the last five to ten years of bioprinting is the convergence of discoveries in material science, with advances in fabrication, particularly 3D printing that has really picked up the pace. We have seen more progress in the last five years than we did 15 years before that, and I think we will see incredible progress in the coming decade as that convergence matures and, particularly, as the clinical teams around the world realize what the possibilities are now in collaboration with the appropriate science and engineering groups. I’m sure many more specific challenges will come to the floor and that we will be able to meet them because of this convergence,” he concluded.

[Images: UOW, ACES, Vision Eye Institute]

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Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Sydney receives 3D bioprinter, pursues clinical trials for microtia

Researchers from the University of Wollongong (UOW) ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) in Australia, have developed a customizable 3D bioprinter, 3D Alek, to combat congenital ear deformity. Designed for the treatment of microtia, the 3D Alek has been installed at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA) in Sydney. “Treatment of this particular […]
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3D Printed Fins Help Surfers Catch the Perfect Wave…and May Signal a Sports Industry Revolution

If you like 3D printing just as much as you enjoy riding those gnarly waves, you may remember when a research team from the University of Wollongong (UOW) in Australia started 3D printing surfboard fins specifically tailored to the needs of the individual surfer two years ago. This research has continued, and a multidisciplinary team of UOW students and academics from the university’s Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF), along with several surfers, recently took a trip to hang ten at the remote Mentawai Islands in Indonesia, and test out new shapes of surfboard fins, which were designed and 3D printed at UOW.

The project is part of UOW’s Global Challenges Program, with an initial goal of testing out several of these new 3D printed fin shapes and comparing them against conventional fins. But the researchers also hope to determine the possibility of developing a new niche manufacturing industry out of 3D printed surfboard fins.

“There is a lot to a simple surfboard fin, you have to consider the fin base, depth, rake (or sweep), foil, cant, toe and flex,” said Professor Marc in het Panhuis from the university’s School of Chemistry, who worked on the last 3D printed surfboard fin project. “Not to forget, the number of fins and their positioning on a surfboard.

“There is no such thing as a simple surfboard fin. The team has looked at things different materials that can make the fin stronger, lighter and its ability to flex.”

According to Professor in het Panhuis, ocean swell and a good surfboard, fitted with the proper fins, are both equally important to surfers. While these 3D printed fins may look like commercially available ones, Professor in het Panhuis said that “the proof is in the ride.”

Dr. Stephen Beirne with the university’s ANFF said that this is the perfect project to conduct trials on 3D printing and rapid prototyping.

“3D printing enables us to print virtually anything we can imagine and that includes surfboard fins. Our team started out creating CAD-generated fin designs on a computer, then we took those designs and used computational fluid dynamics to see how the fin was likely to perform in the water,” explained Dr. Beirne. “The last part of the process was to select the most appropriate materials to print the prototype.”

3D printing is often used today to fabricate equipment for real-life use in the sports and leisure industry, from protective gear – like soccer shin guards, helmets, and mouthguards – to apparel ranging from specialized footwear, eyewear, and racing gloves, and equipment such as improved snowboards, luge sleds, and even surfboards. By using this technology to create usable parts, the whole sports industry could see a 3D printed revolution in terms of customized products.

The UOW researchers took their time coming up with designs for the 3D printed fins, and after a long search to find the most consistent ocean waves in which to test the fins in real-world conditions, they chose the island chain off the western coast of Sumatra, as it provides both dependable waves and a variety of surf breaks, including the left-hand-breaking Macaronis wave the team used.

“Macaronis is a unique surfing spot because the waves always break on a reef in the same spot,” explained Professor in het Panhuis. “The waves also roll over a long distance and surfers can get a maximum of turns, which is perfect for collecting surfboard fin data.”



The surfers were tasked with catching a variety of waves, and performing as many turns as they could manage on each, with multiple different surfboard fins. Surfboard shaper Dylan Perese of DP Surfboards, who participated in the testing and data collection, also produced standardized surfboards for the project, so everyone had the same base.

Professor in het Panhuis then added embedded sensors and GPS tracking devices to the surfboards to gather performance data on the fins. He explained:

“The devices tracked everything from wave count, speed, number of turns to the amount of rail engaged during turning (to name but a few of the parameters). The surfers also filled out a fin performance rating scale immediately after they completed riding each set of fins. The information is then used to compare the different sets of fins.”

Professor Julie Steele, the Director of UOW’s Biomechanics Research Laboratory, has nearly four decades of experience running human trials, and collected the data during the trials, while also taking pains to ensure that the surfers were not biased toward any particular fin designs.

The surfers were tracked on over 450 waves, performing more than 1,700 turns, in multiple weather conditions, on three different 3D printed fin designs. The results, which should be published soon, were then compared against fins sold by two mainstream fin producers, and there was a clear winner.

“Preliminary analysis of the fin performance rating data has revealed that the surfers, on average, have rated one of the 3D printed fins as feeling the best to surf on. We were surprised that there was such a strong preference for this one fin, given the six surfers all had very different surfing styles,” said Professor Steele.

The 3D printed ‘Crinkle Cut’ fin has a series of grooves on one side, in order to increase the lift to drag ratio and propel surfers along the waves.

“The reason this fin shape works so well is because the contours improve the way the water flows past it,” Professor in het Panhuis explained. “These contours ultimately give the surfer more speed. The fins also seemed to offer plenty of drive and projection out of turns.”


So whether you’re hoping to catch the perfect wave, hit the track, or try for an Olympic medal, 3D printing could help you get to the finish line.

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[Images provided by UOW]