Ink-Based hybrid multi-material fabrication of next generation implants
Improving the life quality of Europe’s increasingly elderly population is one of the most pressing challenges our society faces today. The need to treat age-related degenerative changes in e.g. articular joints or dental implants will boost the market opportunities for tissue regeneration products like biological scaffolds. State of the art 3D printing technologies can provide biocompatible implants with the right macroscopic shape to fit a patient-specific tissue defect. However, for a real functionality, there is a need for new biomaterials, technologies and processes that additionally allow the fabrication of a scaffold microstructure that induces tissue-specific regeneration. It is not possible to address the complexity in structure and properties of human tissues with a single material or fabrication technique. Besides, there are many types of tissue in the human body, each with their own internal structures and functions. INKplant vision is the fusion/combination of different biomaterials (6 different inks), high-resolution, high throughput additive manufacturing technologies already proved for industrial processes (ceramic sterolithography and 3D multimaterial inkjet printing), and advanced simulation and biological evaluation, to bring a new concept for the design and fabrication of biomimetic scaffolds (3D printed patient specific resorbable cell-free implants) which can address the complexity of the different tissue in the human body, demonstrated for 2 Use Cases. For a successful future translation, INKplant will consider all the relevant clinical adoption criteria already at the beginning of the development process. To address INKplant challenging objective the consortium includes the best expertise from the main areas of relevance to the project: biomaterials, 3D printing technology, tissue engineering, regulatory bodies and social humanities.