Vol 6 Chapter 2950: Artificial cornea bio-3D printing system

Chapter 2951 Artificial Cornea Bio-3D Printing System

【Revision】

Having said that, this method is still controversial, after all, there are risks. Whether to continue to wait for corneal resources or to take the risk of using this technology depends on the decision of the patient and family.

As a technology provider, Wu Hao and the others will not deliberately cover up and ignore the risks of this technology, nor will they exaggerate the therapeutic effect of this technology. They just raised questions, and how to answer them needs to be decided by the patients and their families.

After giving everyone some time to digest the information, Wu Hao continued: "With the cells, we can carry out cloning and cultivation. However, the cultivation of these corneal cells is not easy, and there are many problems. The biggest problem is It is the corneal cells that are prone to liquefaction, and this problem has plagued us for a long time.

In order to solve this problem, we organized relevant technical experts to carry out a long-term special attack. After tens of thousands of experiments, we finally solved this problem.

Briefly, we modified the clonal culture environment to accommodate the growth of these keratocytes. First, we solved the problem of light, because the damage of light to these transparent cells is huge.

Because of this, some of the transparent creatures we see either live in deep pits and caves, where they cannot see sunlight all year round, or live in the ocean thousands of meters deep, where sunlight cannot reach that depth.

These transparent creatures survive because they cannot survive once exposed to sunlight. The same is true for corneal cells, which are very fragile in the initial stage of cultivation and growth, and will be damaged and liquefied when exposed to a little strong light.

Therefore, the entire clonal cultivation process is actually carried out under low-wave light environment, which is beneficial to the clonal cultivation of these corneal cells.

After obtaining enough corneal clones, the next step is to print. However, our existing bio-3D printers cannot meet the printing process of corneal tissue. Therefore, we have reinvented the biological 3D printer to improve printing accuracy and stability.

In addition, we have added an artificial intelligence system to the biological 3D printer, which can monitor and adjust the status of the printed tissue in real time, thereby greatly reducing the printing time, improving the printing efficiency, and improving the quality of the corneal tissue.

In addition, we have optimized and upgraded the entire printing chamber. The printing chamber of the previous bio-3D printer was designed after the biological placenta to keep the freshness and vitality of the printed organ tissue to the greatest extent for its long-term survival.

However, on this corneal bio-3D printer, we re-optimized the printing chamber to provide a very good environment for the printed corneal tissue by controlling temperature, humidity, PH value, etc. to ensure its activity. "

Speaking of this, Wu Hao showed a hint of helplessness and said: "Even so, the whole printing process still faces many difficulties.

Because the cornea is very thin, the normal corneal thickness is generally between 0.5~0.55mm and 0.7~1.0mm. Even the final cornea is only a millimeter thick, compared to about half a millimeter for a normal cornea.

In such a thin cornea, it is further divided into epithelial cell layer, anterior elastic layer, stroma layer, posterior elastic layer and endothelial cell layer. In addition, the cornea is rich in sensory nerve endings and capillaries. How to achieve so many layers in such a small thickness requires very high printing accuracy.

However, the printing speed will be greatly reduced in this way, which is absolutely unacceptable. Because the water content of the corneal tissue is high, if the printing time is too long, even if fresh-keeping measures are taken, the activity of the corneal tissue will be greatly reduced, affecting the light transmittance of the cornea, thereby affecting the recovery of vision after transplantation.

Therefore, the entire printing time must be shortened, preferably within ten hours.

To this end, we designed a new cell printing nozzle with five nozzles, each of which can work independently. During the printing process, these five nozzles can work alternately according to the needs of different cells in the organ tissue, each performing its own duties. This design has changed the previous dual-nozzle design and greatly improved the printing speed.

In addition, the five-nozzle design can also independently edit the printing program and adjust it according to the arrangement order of organ tissue cells. That is to say, we can print five layers at a time without printing in layers. In this way, the quality of the printed organ tissue is greatly improved, and the printing time is further shortened.

The addition of an artificial intelligence system can detect the quality of the printed tissue in real time. Once a problem or defect is detected, the print can be reprinted at any time, rather than waiting until the end of the print to find a defect and throwing away the entire finished product.

After a series of modification, optimization and repeated experiments, we finally developed this 3D bio-printer specially used for corneal tissue printing and the supporting corneal cell cultivation and cloning system. "

"With this complete system, we will conduct relevant experiments next. Given our successful experience in bio-3D printing technology, once this technology has passed the safety test and evaluation, we will quickly put it into clinical practice." test.

There were 30 patients in the first phase of the clinical trial, and we successfully extracted corneal cells from 29 of them for clonal cultivation, and then printed artificial bio-corneas for surgical transplantation.

The operation was a complete success. Twenty-nine of the thirty people recovered their eyesight, and UU Reading www.uukanshu.com's vision has reached a relatively ideal state.

As for the remaining patient, a more serious infection occurred after the operation, which led to the failure of the surgical transplant.

Afterwards, we followed up and followed up for half a year after the operation. The visual acuity recovery of these 29 people achieved our expected results, basically returning to normal vision, and the first phase of clinical trials was initially successful. "

In view of the success of the first phase of clinical trials, we are full of confidence in this corneal bioprinting technology and are organizing a larger second phase of clinical trials.

The second phase of the clinical trial initially plans to recruit 500 patients worldwide. We will cooperate with major hospitals and continue to use corneal cell cloning and bio-3D printing technology to customize personalized artificial bio-corneas for patients.

And before the start of the second phase of the experiment, we further optimized the problems existing in the first phase of clinical trials. At the same time, we strengthened the monitoring and control of corneal cell cultivation to ensure that the printed biological corneal tissue has Higher quality and activity.

At the same time, according to the characteristics of the printed artificial biological corneal tissue, the surgical treatment process was re-optimized and improved, which greatly improved the success rate of the operation.

(end of this chapter)