Blood Vessel Models Made of Sugar Used To Study Blood Flow Near Tumors
To fight cancer, imaging, treatment, and monitoring are all needed. In contrast to blood vessels in healthy tissue, a denser and chaotic blood vessel network is an indicator of a tumor. A promising new way to study blood flow in these vessels involves injecting air bubbles and then tracking them with ultrasound. This shows where the blood goes and how the vessels are working, as well as helping with diagnosis, but it can be hard to see bubbles in ultrasound images of real blood vessels. As a ‘sweet’ alternative, PhD researcher Andreas Pollet turned to sugar to make 3D-printed mock-ups of blood vessel networks to more easily study blood flow near tumors.
According to Mary Poppins “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”, but PhD researcher Andreas Pollet would argue that sugar could do a lot more than that in healthcare.
“Sugars are important for a whole host of bodily functions. But in the lab, sugars can be used to build complex models of systems in the human body such as blood vessel networks,” says Pollet, who completed his research in the group of Jaap den Toonder in the department of Mechanical Engineering. “And key to the whole process is 3D printing.”
Sugar in 3D
3D printing is ubiquitous in society today. With the right materials, you can 3D print almost anything from concrete homes to chess pieces and chocolate desserts.
For those with a sweet tooth, it might be disappointing to learn that Pollet was not aiming to 3D print tasty sweet desserts.
Along with his collaborators, Pollet designed a custom 3D printer that can very precisely print fibers of sugar. Multiple fibers can then be combined to create networks that look like blood vessel networks. “Sugar allows for printing without rigid supports, and the material changes from a liquid to a solid after cooling. It can support its own weight then. Furthermore, it’s biocompatible and dissolves in water – something not normally associated with 3D printing materials,” says Pollet.
Reference: Pollet AMAO. (Accepted/In press). In vitro models for investigating vascular flow: A toolbox for recreating the vasculature on chip. Eindhoven University of Technology.
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