Image source @ Visual China
Text | Brain polar body
Recently, because of the exposure of 315 news, the last food you want to see is sauerkraut, which makes people even a little PTSD. Seeing what more than a dozen ancient drying processes, what appears in front of you is a pair of large footboard special pickling. Various foods involving the sauerkraut series, such as instant noodles and sauerkraut fish, have been tragically poisoned, implicating many enterprises. But what is surprising is that during the period when most instant noodle companies were damaged, white elephant instant noodles accidentally caught fire and sold out.
Everyone's sudden attention to white elephants stems from the revelation of a short video: one-third of the employees of white elephants are from disabled people. In a number of instant noodle companies, the market share occupied by white elephant instant noodles is not high, and even one-third of the disabled employees are recruited, and the social responsibility is truly covered to the people who need it most, and this value is also recognized by countless consumers, and it is no wonder that everyone has begun wild consumption again.
According to WHO data for November 2021, more than 1 billion people worldwide are suffering from disabilities, and the number of people with disabilities is increasing year by year as demographic trends and the number of people with chronic diseases increase. In the past few years of the new crown epidemic, the lives of the disabled have been greatly affected, and this vulnerable group has been neglected because of its limited right to speak. Because of the domestic disability infrastructure and conceptual reasons, the daily life of the disabled is very difficult, and cold treatment and discrimination are everywhere, let alone participating in the chain of social values to contribute.
According to the China Disabled Persons' Federation, as early as 2010, the number of disabled people in China exceeded 85 million. Now, that number is even greater, with an estimated number of more than 100 million, and they are in a more difficult situation than we are. In these populations, congenital disabilities are only a part, and acquired disabilities abound. Among the disability diseases, there are deaf and blind, there are paralyzed and aphasia, and there are various dysfunctions. Regardless of the disability, there are many challenges in daily life. The development of science and technology and the continuous progress in the field of biomedicine have brought breakthroughs to the diagnosis and treatment of some disabilities. A recent treatment plan for paralysis has brought good news to millions of paralyzed people.
Freedom of limbs
Do you remember these shocking news: there are those who fall and paralyze their spines when they are playing in the trampoline park, and there are also those who injure their spine due to lower back posture while learning to dance, resulting in paralysis of the lower body. In real life, accidental falls, traffic accidents, improper exercise, etc. will face the risk of paraplegia, affecting the quality of life.
It is reported that millions of people in the world are paralyzed by spinal injuries, nerve cell destruction, nerve fiber rupture, spinal cord transfusion and other patients, there is still no effective treatment plan. Once paralyzed, it means being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life, and it feels very depressing to think about.
The new type of therapy uses 3D bioprinted tissue to treat spinal cord injury, bringing hope to people with spinal cord injury. The new therapy, in animal trials, allows 100 percent of early paralyzed mice and 80 percent of long-term paralyzed mice to regain the ability to walk.
The new therapy comes from a collaboration between scientists and a regenerative medicine company, and a research team led by Dr. Tal Dvir of the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology at Tel Aviv University in Israel, in collaboration with Matricelf, an Israeli regenerative medicine company, has developed a 3D printed spinal tissue implant that can effectively repair a fractured spine.
In paralyzed mouse trials, novel 3D printed spinal cord tissue implants can quickly repair damaged spines in mice, eventually restoring their ability to walk. It is also the world's first example of tissue-engineered implants restoring mobility in an animal model of long-term paralysis, and this successful model trial is also the most relevant model for human paralysis treatment, providing new possibilities for people with spinal cord injury to live on their feet.
In the way the spinal cord connects injuries, researchers have proposed a variety of methods, such as transplanting different types of cells or biological materials to the damaged site during acute injury, including neural stem cells, neural progenitor cells and other cell transplant therapies have been tested.
However, the results of the experiment were not ideal, either because of the immune rejection caused by allogeneic cells or allogeneic cells, or because these transplanted cells could not successfully form a functional network, resulting in the failure of the transplant.
3D bioprinting technology can print both the patient's cells and the extracellular matrix at the same time, resulting in the production of living tissues and organs. Using the extracted extracellular matrix, the researchers produced a personalized hydrogel that, when implanted, did not trigger an immune rejection reaction. Encapsulating cultured stem cells in a hydrogel can mimic the process of spinal embryonic development and subsequently become 3D neural network implants containing motor neurons.
In a comparative trial, the researchers implanted a novel 3D neural network implant into recipient mice that could quickly repair the damaged spine of paralyzed mice. Eventually, all of the transplanted acutely paralyzed mice regained their ability to walk, and 80 percent of the mice in the long-term paralyzed mouse model regained their ability to walk.
With 3D bioprinting technology, it is possible to print spinal cord tissue grafts that cure paralysis, so that organisms who have lost the ability to walk can gain the ability to walk again, and this breakthrough has undoubtedly made the progress of spinal cord regenerative medicine a big step forward.
Regarding the application of this technology in humans, It is reported that Matrixelf is now actively communicating with the US FDA to enter human trials through its 3D printed spinal implants by the end of 2024. Humans may only be a few years away from being cured of paralysis. Imagine that in a few years, millions of people can benefit from this technology to regain their physical freedom, which is expected.
Tissue damage and degeneration are common phenomena in the human body. However, in the face of some serious trauma, the human body's regenerative ability can not cope with and can not achieve self-healing, the use of 3D printing biological tissue technology, can also bring new solutions to some tissues and organs and other transplants.
"Blossoming" breakthroughs in multiple fields
Thanks to the rapid development of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, 3D bioprinting technology is currently one of the most advanced technologies in the field of medical tissue engineering, including the most advanced technologies in the field of materials science and biotechnology, and has been used to make damaged tissues and repair damaged tissues and simple organs.
Similar to ordinary 3D printing techniques, 3D bioprinting technology is based on a top-down, layer-by-layer approach to generate complex and precise three-dimensional structures. The difference is that the ultimate goal of 3D bioprinting technology is to build tissues or organs layer by layer.
For 3D bioprinting technology, the key to its technology is to design a model of the printed organ and select bioink. In the case of bioink, it is usually a composite material composed of other essential components such as biomaterials and cells. Because this technology can be studied for the manufacture of functional human tissues or organs, such as the heart, liver, skin, bones, etc. Therefore, achieving and maintaining the activity and function of bioink materials is the key to this technology.
(3D printed fully vascularized mini human heart)
In terms of organ transplantation and tissue transplantation, there are solutions such as 3D organ printing technology, iPSC technology and xenotransplantation, which have their own advantages and disadvantages and are used to solve different transplant and treatment needs. In contrast, 3D organ printing needs to solve the limitations of bioink, xenotransplantation still needs to solve the problems of immune rejection and endogenous viruses in animals, and iPSC technology is still difficult to achieve organ construction. These programs and technologies are developing in parallel in their respective fields of adaptation, and both are addressing the problem of insufficient resources for organ transplant donors.
In practical clinical applications, 3D bioprinting technology also has many new breakthroughs. Recently, the orthopedic team of the Ninth Hospital of Shanghai in China pioneered a new type of 3D biomaterial printing technology, which simulates and prints the bone material that needs to be implanted by extracting the patient's own cells. The printed bone material will be transplanted into the human body, and the bone cells will exert the effect of bone fusion, and the growth will be restored more quickly and efficiently. It is said that this technology has undergone 3 clinical operations around the world so far, all of which are in Shanghai Ninth Hospital.
In addition to clinical applications in the medical field, 3D printing technology can also be applied to drug trials, surgical training and environmental protection in the medical field.
AnThony Atala research institute from the United States has developed a new biological tissue with 3D printing technology that can test the toxicity of drugs, and this technology has also been applied to test the toxicity of drugs against the new crown virus.
In the environmentally friendly scenario, researchers have tried to use 3D bioprinting technology to create biomimetic 3D printed corals as a new tool for coral-inspired biomaterials that can be found in algae biotechnology, coral reef protection and coral-algae symbiosis research.
Whether it is clinical medicine or beyond the scope of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, the application of 3D bioprinting technology in these fields is trying to open new doors, and to continue the previous slow and stagnant research areas with new opportunities and possibilities.
Next stop: "Print" Life
We can see that over the past two decades, many biological 3D printing technologies have been developed and applied to numerous biomedical fields, including tissue engineering, disease modeling, and drug screening. Nevertheless, most biological 3D bioprinting technologies are still quite far from clinical and translational applications, and face many obstacles.
1. Limitations of the core technology itself. From organ tissue model to bioink raw materials, the improvement of the entire system technology is required, such as the shelf life of bioink tissue, which is affected by various conditions such as micro-environment and temperature, and the breakthrough of single printing technology cannot support the clinical conversion and application of 3D bioprinting technology.
2. Supplementation and refinement of policies and regulatory regulations. For the clinical application of 3D bioprinting technology, there is a lack of effective regulatory policies to ensure the clinical application environment of medical care and researchers, and for this product involving personalized medicine, extensive discussion and consultation are needed to protect the soil of innovation and application.
3. The transformation of clinical application of medical care and patient philosophy. The clinical application of 3D bioprinting technology means personalized medicine, which also puts forward requirements for the concept of medical care and patients, and requires both parties to accept new medical products and devices with an open mind. Personalized medicine has many more risks and responsibilities for caregivers and patients than standardized medicine.
Overall, although these restrictions hinder the large-scale application of 3D bioprinting technology, in biomedical applications, 3D bioprinting technology has also struggled to enter a new stage and made good progress. For example, the printing of large-scale tissues and organs, the establishment of disease models, the construction of microphysiological systems and organ chips, biological robots and space bioprinting.
For example, in terms of printing technology for large-scale tissues, in situ bioprinting protocols can 3D print tissue directly on the injured area.
A research team has been tested using the device in a biological model of the human stomach to verify its effectiveness in bioprinting live cells and repairing wounds, and the technology may be used in the future to treat stomach wall injuries. In the future, direct scanning of wounds and spraying "bioink" can repair damaged tissue, and the medical technology of the future people in the movie will be realized.
However, this cool cutting-edge technology is not a lone battle in a single field, involving materials, chemistry, drugs, biology and other fields, and it requires collaborative research and development in these fields to go further. Once successfully applied at scale, it will make an unprecedented contribution in the field of health.
Improving the quality of life and delaying aging is the main theme of human research in the field of life sciences, with the acceleration of the era of comprehensive aging, lesions and aging of organs and tissues will be the hardest hit areas in the medical field. The biotechnology revolution based on 3D bioprinting can bring some new possibilities to our lives. Whether it is the free liberation of limbs of paralyzed people, or the treatment and replacement of diseased tissues and organs, we have some confidence and confidence in the face of an uncontrollable future.
However, to achieve the improvement of quality of life and the extension of life expectancy, in addition to the usual healthy lifestyle, you must also save more money to afford high-end medical services. After all, if the wood has money, everything is free to talk about, or bury your head in the bricks.