Xilloc is pushing the boundaries in skeletal reconstructive surgery once again. Teaming up with Next21, a Japanese company that is an innovator in medical technology and a specialist in biomedical ceramic printing, Xilloc is on the verge of licensing and releasing a new technology for bone implants in the European market- it’s called CT-Bone.

The collaborative effort of researchers from a variety of institutes in Moscow has resulted in a paper published in the most recent issue of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. 

Exovite is currently “developing a system of immobilization and rehabilitation tools that will create a revolution in the field of orthopedics and musculoskeletal treatments.”  The Rehabilitation System attached to the 3D printed cast uses an electrostimulator, which allows the immobilization to be completed and to start rehabilitation and make those two processes overlap.

Dr. Jing Yang says the work on 3D printing human tissues for regenerative medical applications uses living cells and biomaterials placed at precise locations to mimic the natural organization of cells. 

The ACO Hip Guide System, a platform of 3D surgical planning software and patient-specific surgical guides for hip surgery from Materialise, will now be joined by Consensus Orthopedics following their adoption of a version for knee surgeries earlier this year.

Professor Guo Wei from the Peking University People’s Hospital is now the first to use 3D printing technology to create a sacral prosthesis that would in effect take the place of a patient's removed sacrum.

Professor Wang Xiaoping from the Tang Du Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University is the first doctor to remove a patient's sternum and replace it with an “exact” replica made of 3D printed titanium.

In Guangdong, China, at the Southern Medical University, Dean Professor Huang Wenhua. Wenhua and his students are using high-precision 3D printers to print out pure bone structures, made up of bone powder and a type of “bio-glue”.

4WEB Medical, a leading global provider of 3D printed orthopedic implants, announced its first Australian patient specific implant surgery.

Dr. Shen Tongya, professor of Neurosurgery at Yonsei University in South Korea, successfully completed a 3D printed pelvic implantation for a teenage girl suffering from one of the most common types of bone cancer.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery expert Dr Mohd Nazimi Abd Jabar came up with a 3D-printed facial implant to treat a patient who was involved in a severe car accident that left her with facial defects.

Surgeons at the Handan General Orthopaedic Hospital in China have used 3D printing to repair a young male patient’s severely deformed legs.

3-D prints under National Health Services will be producing fibrocartilaginous matrix to provide as an alternative to current treatments of temporomandibular joint disorders and hence engineering TMJ discs.

Boyd Goldie, an orthopaedic doctor in london, has started working with Ultimaker 2+, a software that converts medical scans to printable models. This free open software adds to the charm of 3D printing of the models, which help the doctor to get most of this technology.

Australian neurosurgeon, Ralph Mobbs, successfully removed cancer-riddled vertebrae of his patient Drage Josevski who was suffering from Chordoma. After removal, the 3D printed body part was used as replacement for the vertebrae. After 15 hour surgery, patient was under screening for progress.

NovaCast, a mexican mediprint, creates customized 3D printed Plaster cast which overweighs normal plaster in every concept. It doesn't absorb sweat, causes less skin infections, is 1/10th light-weighted, invisible to x-rays and you can take bath while wearing it. There's no way ordinary plaster can beat this 3.5 hours-to-make 3D printed plaster cast.

A 54 year old Australian patient of cancer received Titanium rib cage and sternum after considering the option better than plate implants. CSIRO, the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia, claimed their 3D printed titanium model was perfect for identically mimicking the intricate structures of the sternum and ribs and the patient was discharged healthy and recovered well.

Titanium based digital fusion of bones of extremities is the first product of Additive Orthopaedics to receive FDA 510(k) clearance. The Limited Liability Company, Additive Orthopaedics, is seeing this oppurtunity as future of surgeries as the 3D Printing Market continues to expand globally.

Designers at Nottingham Trent University, UK, have discovered microstructure of a 3D-printed bone scaffold. This new scaffold is believed to contain all minerals like natural bone and will dissolve as patient recovers, thereby creating a bridge for tissue regeneration.

Inspite of cutting out the injuries and prescribing medications for pain, 3D printing has opened new doors of Orthobiologics. 3D Bone Implants such as CT-Bone® from Next21 and Xilloc and Repair and Regeneration techniques from Kuros Biosciences and Bioventus are some of the landmarks of 3D printing sectors.

BodyCad, a Quebec City-based developer and manufacturer of personalized orthopaedics, announced the introduction of Bodycad OnCall, its personalized, individually manufactured orthopaedic restorations for complex cases. The Bodycad OnCall is supposed to help surgeons with flexibility in design and manufacturing of a fully personalized restoration and considered ideal for oncology, revision and osteotomy.

A team of students from Gonzaga University have developed an Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) which can be 3D Printed within 2 days compared to weeks. This AFO is produced after using 3D Scanner to get accurate measurements, and then printing it using CAD software.

Drage Josevski was diagnosed with Chordoma, a rare type of bone cancer, which grew in his spine. Dr. Ralph Mobbs of the Sydney Spine Clinic turned to medical device company Anatomics seeking help with this case, which finally produced 3D printed titanium implant that would replace the cancerous vertebrae. The operation took 15 hours and was successful one.

Aether 1 bioprinter is one of the 3D Bio-Printers that is capable of printing two bones connected by a tendon using six materials that include synthetic bone, conductive ink, stem cells and graphene oxide. When usual bio-printers may cost upto 200,000$, the Aether 1 Bio-printer costs only 9000$ and they will be rolled out soon after some donations to researchers and universities.

NYC-based startup called EpiBone is working to discover alternate sources for 3D printing bone, and one of the abundant source is animal bone material. EpiBone team is building a 3D printed scaffold to create an environment in which a body’s own fat tissue stem cells can grow into new bone for which they are using animal bones that have been stripped of all its cellular material.

Spineart has announced that it received CE marking for its new JULIET lumbar inter-body systems with Ti-LIFE Technologythat isultra-compact, sterile packed and bar-coded for increased safety, procedure compliance and cost-efficiency. The Ti-Life micro-porous scaffold mimics the bone trabecular structure and features interconnected pores of 600 μm to 700 μm and an overall porosity of 70-75% designed to enable cell colonization and promote bone in-growth.

Amedica has made its first complex, three-dimensional structures by a 3D printing process called Robotic deposition, or Robocasting which is is a freeform fabrication technique for dense ceramics and composites that is based on layered deposition of highly colloidal slurries. The final products have been confirmed for integrity and validity of the 3D printing method and have been shown to achieve similar theoretical density and microstructure attributed to the traditionally manufactured silicon nitride fusion devices currently in use with advantages in bone fusion, antibacterial behaviour and superior strength.

The first 3D Printing Factory had already started construction in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. The project started after the Fengdu county government of the municipality and the Hkable Biological 3D (China) Co Ltd, a joint venture between U.-based Hkable and local biotechnology company Jintai, signed a cooperation agreement on Tuesday. The factory is estimated to cost 50 million yuan ($7.5 million) and will produce human part molds to help with surgery for orthopedics, burns and dentistry, and artificial parts such as limbs.

The Texas-based 4Web Medical Company has just announced that they received FDA clearance for their Lateral Interbody Fusion Devices. The platform consists of the Cervical Spine Truss System, the ALIF Spine Truss System, the Posterior Spine Truss System and the Osteotomy Truss System.  4WEB is currently developing truss implant designs for knee, hip, trauma and patient specific procedures where the patient will benefit from optimal porosity and osseous incorporation.

Periodontist Professor Saso Ivanovski, from Griffith University’s Menzies Institute has announced that he has developed a way to engineer missing bone and tissue in the gums and jaw by using a patient’s own cells after 5 years of research. This will involve taking CT scan of patient's damaged region which will be sent to bioprinter to 3D Print new part and the whole procedure will decrease the significant pain, nerve damage and postoperative swelling. National Health and Medical Research Council has granted it $650,000 for the potential it holds in dental industry.

Korean Central Television (KCTV) recently revealed some footages that showed Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, North Korea, giving demonstration of their own 3D printer to reporters, with the statement that it can print bone for dental and cosmetic surgery procedures. Apart from that, KCTV showed two documents they stated were a “patent of certification” and a certification of assessment from the “intellectual products exhibition”.

AMBER Materials Science Center, Ireland, are working on bone grafts through 3D Printing, either via autografting or allografting by inserting the bioprinted materials and patient's stem cells subcutaneously and regenerating the bone. Funded by Science Foundation, Ireland and hosted at Trinity College, Dublin; this new method will provide less painful, successful and affordable reach to the patients with Cancerous tumors or suffering bone defects.

Dr. Nina Tandon, CEO of Epibne has started bioprinting human bones using CT scan and 3D model of it, which is then CNC milled with animal bone, following which, fat cells from patient are integrated with CNC milled animal bone. Plum Alley Investments, a private membership started by Deborah Jackson and Andrea Turner Moffit to support promising female entrepreneurs and gender-diverse teams, has announced funds of $560,000 to Epibone to support this 3D Printing initiative which will reduce the need for multiple surgeries.

This year’s 3D Scaffolds Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award in the Transformational Healthcare category have been grabbed by Singapore-based company at the Frost & Sullivan Singapore Excellence Awards. Osteopore International for their innovation in 3D Printed Scaffolding that deals with healing of tissue within the human body as well as regeneration. Set up in 1999, Osteopore has been pioneering methods of 3D Printing to provide range of innovations as well as customer satisfaction.

A 60-year-old man in Croatia had been suffering from an infection in his shoulder, resulting in him losing bone mass and mobility of his shoulder joint. A team of surgeons led by Nikola Matejčić, MD at the Clinic for Orthopaedics in Lovran, implanted a 3D Printed Shoulder which was created using a technology of additive manufacturing, namely the Trabecular Titanium 3D printing technology.

A team of researchers at Samsung Medical Center announced that they have a successful method for using 3D printing to rebuild the jawbones of oral cancer patients. Led by Professor Baek Chung-hwan of the department of otolaryngology, the medical team created a 3D printed surgical guide that allows them to rebuild areas of the jaw as well as eliminating areas that are ridden with cancer. The team was able to perform surgery and reconstruction all at once, using the new bone made from the patient’s leg bone, fibula.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan has developed bone material specially designed for ethnic Chinese people using 3D printing to combine metal and ceramic composite materials with bionic bone structures, and is expected to come in 2018. The ITRI-developed 3D printed bone material is lightweight, hydrophilic, and fuses easily with existing bone. It’s porous and hollow and can be used to regenerate natural bone, plus it can be easily customized for personalized treatment.

CADskills, a medical device startup from Belgium uses 3D Printing Technology to produce patient-specific implants for craniomaxillofacial (CMF) and neurosurgery patients, including its innovative AMSJI, a new generation of subperiosteal implant for extreme maxillary atrophy. To counter bone atrophy, AMSJI eliminates the bone grafting process and its months of recovery time and the surgery takes around 1 hour. These Titanium implants are 3D Printed using Mimics Innovation Suite (MIS) from Materialise.

A team of researchers from TU Delft have developed hybrid materials which can be used to 3D Print Hip Implants with enhanced bone growth and increased life-span. The new implant will combine a conventional meta-biomaterial with an auxetic one, a complex stretching property. These 3D Printed Hybrid Implants are expected to have greater longevity and fix better than current hip implants.

Emerging Implant Technologies (EIT), a German company, famous for its Cellular Titanium technology, has received FDA clearance again, to expand their EIT Cellular Titanium Cervical Cage to be used in multiple contiguous cervical levels (C2 to T1) and this is the first multi-level 3D printed cervical cage to enter the US market. It is designed to be used with autogenous and/or allogenic bone grafts to facilitate fusion, and should be used with supplemental fixation.

Florida-based Captiva Spine Inc., a privately owned medical device organization that was founded in 2007 has recently received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for its 3D Printed TirboLOX-L Titanium Lumbar Cages. TirboLOX-L Titanium Lumbar Cages uses 3D printing to form interbody fusion devices, made out of titanium alloy, with a double layer organic lattice structure and include the benefits such as the bone’s ability to successfully grow within its architecture, which can then help it achieve good kinematic properties.

Dr. Rajiv Shah, an Orthopedic Surgeon at Global Hospital along with 3D Printing Startup 3D Post in Vadodara, India, has successfully implanted a 3D printed implant in a trauma patient which was first of its kind since it was the first patient-specific 3D printed trauma implant through a total talus replacement. The implant was 3D Printed using EOS M 280 3D Printer using titanium as the implant material for a 32-year old man from Guajarat, India who suffered an accident that resulted in the loss of his talus bone.

A collaborative team of researchers from the National Taiwan University Hospital, the China Medical University Hospital, and Asia University have created a new bone substitute- Calcium Silicate Bone Scaffold that have both osteoconductive and osetoinductive potential to be used for bone grafts/repair required in people suffering from bone defects and disorders around the globe. The team explored the effects of various loading methods on novel grafting material bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2), which was loaded with a mesoporous calcium silicate (MesoCS) scaffold created with FDM 3D printing on a 3D bioprinter from GeSiM.

Linh Nam, a Harvard College Student was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, a cancerous tumor in the bone when she was just ten years old and had a section of bone removed from her leg with a gap left and upcoming 10 surgeries over a decade. However, she joined with Hala Zreiqat, biomedical engineering professor, to work on a project that aims to create a biocompatible, artificial material with the same strength and porosity as real bone using 3D printing. Professor Zreigat’s team finally found a way to generate a porous core of a novel multi-component ceramic for bone implants using 3D printing which will be available to public around 2019.

Researchers at New York University developing 3D Printed Ceramic Implants that dissolve slowly within the body, stimulating bone to grow in their place, thereby helping in restoring the bone defects that cannot be filled with allograft or autografts. The ceramic implant contains beta tricalcium phosphate, similar to components in natural bone, making the implants resorbable over time and are coated with dipyridamole, a blood thinning agent that stimulates bone growth and attracts bone cells to the implant.

Oxford Performance Materials Inc., a Connecticut-based company known for its 3D Printed Implants close to bones with osteoconductive properties and PEKK, has recently been accredited as a foreign medical device manufacturer by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. Now able to serve over 14 countries of Asia in a partnership with JSR Corp. of Tokyo, OPM looks forward to expanding the reach of 3D Printing to far horizons.

Next 21 K.K., after receiving a commercialization approval in Japan and Europe, has announced formal approval for a new technology to 3D print synthetic bone grafts, called CT-Bone, which is a 3D printable, calcium phosphate implant that’s actually converted into real bone by the patient’s own body. After a CT-scan, Next21 K.K.’s biomedical team create a patient-specific implant (PSI), which can incorporate porosity and match the patient’s anatomy perfectly, which helps facilitate bony ingrowth and good bone-to-implant contact.

Paul D’urso, MD, Anatomics Founder and a neurosurgeon at Epworth Healthcare, had reported 700 spinal fusion procedures at the recent 3DHEALS conference in San Francisco. They also developed Atlantoaxial transarticular screw fixation, an effective technique for arthrodesis and discussed how biomodelling and 3D printing are both useful tools for pre-surgical planning, developing titanium implants and patient-specific tools, and intraoperative stereotaxy – a minimally invasive surgical procedure which uses a 3D coordinate system to locate small targets inside the body and then perform an action, like an ablation, biopsy, injection, or implantation.

A research conducted at The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University in Zhejiang, China, provides insights to the use of 3D Printing in medical field. 48 patients suffering from distal radius fractures (one of the most common type of upper body injuries) participated in the study, with a 3D model made of each break using CT scans and Mimics software before being 3D Printed in PLA. The research concluded the advantage with more accurate diagnosis and surgery, faster procedure time, less blood loss in patients, and frequency of intraoperative fluoroscopy.

18-year-old Noor Fadil was diagnosed with Chondromyxoid fibroma, a rare, benign bone tumor that has grown in her pelvis, for which she reached out to Yellow Ribbon Team in Bangalore, India. The team of Doctors collaborated with Bangalore-based Osteo3D and implantcast GmbH in Germany. The surgeons removed the tumor and followed up for two years, and then team took CT and MRI scans to create a realistic digital model for planning purposes and to help design a biocompatible, patient-specific, 3D printed implant. The team designed and used 3D printed plastic guidance jigs and the First Ever Pelvic Implant of country helped her start a new life.

A team from the Research Center for Nano-Biomaterials at Sichuan University worked on four groups of scaffolds, namely: PCL, PCL/PVAc, PCL/HA and PCL/PVAc/HA. By 3D Printing them on 3D Bioprinter V2.0 (manufactured by Hangzhou Regenovo Biotechnology Co., Ltd, China), they revealed that although they had almost similar porosity, the mechanical properties were different. PCL/PVAc/HA scaffold was selected the winner with more favorable characteristics during in vitro cell culture experiment and in vivo bone formation.

Researchers at Morphologic Science Experimental Center, Central South University, China, worked towards making the use of Phone Cameras and Cloud service-based workflow to image bone specimens and print their three-dimensional (3D) models for anatomical education. Using four typical human bone specimens, the femur, rib, cervical vertebra and skull , photographed by a phone camera, they aligned and converted them into digital images for incorporation into a digital model through the Get3D website and submitted to an online 3D printing platform to obtain the 3D Printed models. The results were excellent and as low as distance deviations ≤2 mm were noted among 99% of the random sampling points that were tested.

University Medical Centre, Utrecht, which is working with two European start-ups, MRIguidance and Axial3D, has now received grant from European Eurostars to develop end-to-end solution for radiation-free pre-operative planning in Orthopaedics. BoneMRI, the product of the collaboration, yields CT-like images of the bones and complement soft tissues derived from an MRI scan, which are then used to create 3D Printed Medical Models of the same. This, therefore, reduces the radiation exposure as seen in CT but not MRI.

Surgical Removal of tumours, especially in Oral Cancer patients, is disfiguring and cannot be completely recovered even after reconstruction surgeries. But Titanium implants have shown promises in the field of reconstruction surgeries, and now, Russian researchers are trying to figure out osseous integration occurring with titanium implants in animals, post re-section, and studying both the implanting and then the required removal of prosthesis meant to be temporary. Titanium bionic implants, tetragonal-shaped, were fabricated to mimic human bone and a Russian-made selective laser melting (SLM) printer was used with Titanium VT1-00 powder. The researchers concluded Clear Establishment that the insertion of the implant led to tissue growth over the device, but with no inflammation detected.

Researchers from Taiwan worked on improved methods of accommodating bone defects after failed implants must be removed using 3D Printing. Bio-Active Dental implant, which were manufactured with laser-sintered additive 3D printing technique, were used in animal experiments where one side of distal femurs was randomly selected for the commercially pure titanium NobelActive implant (control group) and the other side with Bio-Active Ti₆Al₄V porous dental implant (ITRI group). After Bio-printing with EOSINT M 280 system, the researchers concluded that by enlarging pore width at the nanoscale, they can to increase bioactivity features as well as accelerate osseogenesis during Dental Surgeries.

L.E.Murr, a researcher from the University of Texas at El Paso, wrote an overview of how 3D printing of Metal and Alloy Implants using powder bed fusion technologies, especially with commercial laser and electron beam systems, has rapidly emerged worldwide. He emphasized on key points: Applications of solidification fundamentals to powder bed fusion fabrication; Fundamentals of powder bed fusion AM of complex and porous biomedical implants; Design strategies for fabricating porous, optimized metal and alloy biomedical implants by powder bed fusion technologies and Examples of porous, powder-bed fabricated implants which included: Custom-built cranial/maxillofacial/implants and surgical, pre-operative models; 3D printed, open-cellular structure spinal implants; 3D implant designs for total hip arthroplasty; Total knee arthroplasty and open-cellular implant components and Complex skeletal reconstruction implants: personalization of implant fabrication through hospital point-of-care, 3D printing centers.

Authors Linglong Deng, Xing Zhao, Chi Wei, Wengiang Qu, Li Yu, and Shaobo Zhu, wrote their research paper about using 3D Printing in Bone Cancer and its application to create Prosthetic fit for the patient. Chondrosarcoma is an Aggressive Bone Tumour that requires limb salvaging as the only option. The team used 3D Printing to create Prosthesis with Titanium and screwed into the scapula of the patient suffering from Chondrosarcoma. After four weeks, the patient was able to move his hand, elbow, and shoulder, and is still in good condition with no pain in the shoulder.

Researchers from the Department of Orthopaedics Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, and Yuying Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, China, used 3D Printing to reduce the blood loss and surgery time in Hip fracture cases. 7 patients were assessed over a five-year period from 2012-2017, with 3D printed models created for treatment and surgical simulation. CT data was used to create 3D models of each patient’s fracture followed by trochanteric osteotomies, along with simulating intraoperative reduction and fixation techniques using the models fabricated using 3D Printing. The authors confirmed that with the use of the 3D Printed Model, they were able to reduce time in the operating room, and blood loss, but require further studies to confirm it.