Collaborators Week: 3D printed living ears

Our quest to create 3D printed living ears to treat patients with microtia (a congenital ear deformity resulting in the ear being malformed or underdeveloped) or those who have suffered a traumatic incident was catalysed by a connection with Dr Payal Mukherjee, an ENT surgeon based at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. One cannot help but be inspired by Payal’s passion for research and total commitment to delivering positive outcomes for patients.

This has taken us on ventures to India to build further collaborations with Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone (AMTZ) in Vizag, India – as well as extending our collaborative team in Australia to ensure that the technical challenges are met AND the solution is deployable.

As a clinician I am confronted by the utter desperation in my patients eyes when we are limited by the tools in clinical practice. When I collaborate with the IPRI team, I see a wealth of possibilities to challenge the status quo that allows me to give my patients new hope. I am so grateful to the tremendous passion and enthusiasm from an exceptional team of researchers at IPRI and wish they could see how even minor scientific innovations can make a big difference to individuals. - Dr Payal Mukherjee, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

To date, we have developed cell recovery and isolation processes as well as a customised hybrid printer that allows the structural integrity of a printed ear to be realised while having a biomaterial arrangement to facilitate cartilage generation in the interstitial volume. In a collaborative off shoot arranged by Payal, we have also worked with Sophie Fleming, a prosthetist from Prosthetic Art Technology, to create a customised printer to produce prosthetic ears as an interim solution.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is so essential for the development of technologies that are relevant to the field they are aimed at helping. Harnessing a wide scope of specialties for a project means that ideas, innovations and solutions are sparked that may not have eventuated with a homogenous academic or clinical group looking at a problem all from the same angle. - Sophie Fleming, Prosthetic Art Technology

On both of these fronts, we have made great progress and we have assembled the team to complete the multidimensional research and translational journey.

You may also be interested in a new venture established to facilitate connections and collaborations for emerging scientists, engineers and clinicians in order to accelerate the journey along the translational pathways. The Beyond Science program is open to all. Check it out and come join us.

Selected Publications

• Posniak S, Chung J.H.Y*, Liu X, Mukherjee P, Wallace G.G, The importance of elastin and its role in auricular cartilage, Bioprinting (2023), 32, e00276
• Posniak S, Chung J.H.Y*, Liu X, Mukherjee P, Gambhir S, Khansari A, Wallace G, Bioprinting of chondrocyte stem cell co-cultures for auricular cartilage regeneration, ACS Omega (2022), 7(7) ,5908-5920
• Fay, C.D., Jeiranikhameneh, A., Sayyar, S. et al. Development of a customised 3D printer as a potential tool for direct printing of patient-specific facial prosthesis. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 120, 7143–7155 (2022).
• Mukherjee P, Chung J, Cheng K, Gupta R, Haag H, Williams Z, Wallace G, In vitro and in vivo study of PCL-Hydrogel scaffold to advance bioprinting translation in microtia reconstruction, J. Craniofac. Surg (2021), 32 (5), 1931-1936
• Chung J.H.Y, Kade J.C, Jeiranikhameneh A, Ruberu K, Mukherjee P, Yue Z, Wallace G., 3D hybrid printing platform for auricular cartilage reconstruction, Biomed Phys Eng Express. (2020) 6 (3): 035003

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