Rapid Prototyping in Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering has attracted great attention as a key technology for realizing regenerative medicine (Lysaght and Reyes, 2001, Ringe, et al., 2002). In particular, tissue and organ repair are a possible applications owing to recent advances such as the development of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (Takahashi and Yamanaka, 2006). Cell culture on a 3dimensional extracellular matrix (3D ECM) is required to study differentiation of stem cells into various types and achieve in vitro tissue repair (Cukierman, et al., 2001, Stevens and George, 2005). Therefore, 2D and 3D patterning technologies for developing scaffolds are increasingly required in tissue engineering. In this context, the role of rapid prototyping (RP) in medicine and biomedical engineering is greatly expanding. Highly precise and fine scaffold patterning has been achieved not only by photolithography (Leclerc, et al., 2004) but also by several RP methods including 3D printing (Kim, et al., 2008, Landers, et al., 2002, Nakamura, et al., 2005, Roth, et al., 2004). In most of these technologies, 2D or 3D scaffold patterns are batchwise or sequentially fabricated, cells are subsequently cultured on the scaffold pattern, and cell viability in the mixture of patterns is evaluated. To investigate the process of tissue repair, interactions between various types of cells on 3D structures have been studied. The pattern complexity of these structures has been found to be increasing. In biomedical engineering, not only tissue engineering but also the developments of implantable and other prostheses are important applications of RP technology. In biomedical engineering. Commencing with inlays, many implantable prostheses such as total joint prostheses and dental prostheses have been realized based on RP technology. Furthermore, bone regeneration is one of the principal applications of tissue engineering. RP of hydroxyapatite (HAp) is expected to play a significant role in this field. As described above, the application of RP in biomedical engineering is greatly expanding. In this chapter, some applications of RP in medicine and biomedical engineering fields and a systematic collection of the latest achievements in these areas have been described.