Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories that will focus on innovation at N.C. State. Upcoming stories include interviews about the video game industry, wireless power, and more.
RALEIGH, N.C. – A vitamin that consumers can find in food such as asparagus and cottage cheese could be a key ingredient in developing tiny medical devices in the future, according to new research from N.C. State University.
Researchers have found that vitamin B2, also known as riboflavin, can be used in a 3-D printing technique that could be used to create small objects. While more research is needed, the printing technique could eventually be applied to making the next generation of medical devices.
“We’ve done a lot of interesting work over the last seven to eight years,” said Roger Narayan, a professor in the joint biomedical engineering department at N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill. “No one has commercialized it yet, but I think there’s a path do so.”
The researchers used a 3-D printing technique called two-photon polymerization. This technique can create small objects with detailed features of less than 1 micrometer in size. This level of detail opens the door to future products such as such as scaffolds for tissue engineering, microneedles that offer a new way of administering drugs to patients and customized implantable medical devices.
The two-photon polymerization 3-D printing technique uses chemicals that react to light. This reaction turns a liquid precursor into a solid polymer. Exposing the liquid to targeted amounts of light allows users to “print” 3-D objects.
The problem with this 3-D printing technique is that most of the chemicals that are used to make the liquid react to light are toxic, which makes them unacceptable for use on products for the human body. But N.C. State researchers have shown that riboflavin can be use in place of those toxic chemicals. The research has been published in online in the journal Regenerative Medicine.
“Other groups have used riboflavin in the past for other types of photo initiation,” Narayan said. “We didn’t invent that but we did apply it to this rapid typing printing technique.”
Using the technique with a non-toxic compound such as riboflavin could be important for developing medical devices customized to individuals. Medicine already provides some customized medical devices – Invisalign braces and the shell of hearing aids, are some examples.
But the technique will be important making customized implantable devices. For instance, patients who have abnormal heart rhythms can be treated with an implantable defibrillator. Patients come in all shapes and sizes but the defibrillators aren’t fashioned to fit individuals.
Right now, large medical device companies like Medtronic or Johnson & Johnson are limited in the designs and the kinds of materials they can use to make their products, Narayan said. They can’t use toxic chemicals in their devices so that precludes them from using this particular 3-D printing technique. And without the ability to use this technique, it’s harder to make small devices and customized products. Riboflavin could change that.
“You can make something that’s patient specific,” Narayan said.
Narayan said the next step for N.C. State researchers is to optimize the composition for a particular medical application. The N.C. State research so far has received funding from the National Science Foundation. Narayan said that he’s looking for potential partners in industry that might be interested in financing additional research.
