T. CERVANTES ET AL.Researchers have fabricated an artificial ear from titanium wire, bovine collagen, and cells from sheep, according to a paper published yesterday (July 31) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Ear reconstructions today are done using cartilage harvested from patients’ rib cages or polymer implants. But these materials have not always achieved the flexibility of real ears, nor have they consistently held their shape.
To build a better ear, the researchers 3-D printed an ear-shaped structure and used it to make a mold. They then built an ear-shaped support system from titanium wire, poured cow collagen into the mold, and embedded the wire within the collagen. Finally, they seeded the ear-shaped scaffold with cartilage cells from sheep. The researchers embedded their synthetic ears under the skin of rats and let them grow for 12 weeks, allowing the cartilage cells to build their own extracellular matrix.
Thomas Cervantes, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and an ...
