Tsinghua University Xu Tao team uses micro DELTA robot+in vivo bioprinting to treat gastric trauma

Introduction: Gastric wall injury is a common digestive tract problem. About 12% of the world's people suffer from gastric wall injury to varying degrees. Bioprinting technology can directly deliver new cells to the damaged site to repair the tissue, which provides a potentially useful method for treating this problem. The difficulty is that the current bioprinting technology is concentrated outside the human body, and the bioprinter is usually very large, so it can not provide enough space for the internal tissue repair without invasive surgery. In order to overcome this problem, Xu Tao of Tsinghua University and others developed a DELTA robot. The DELTA robot enters the human body through an endoscope for tissue repair in the body.

Professor Xu Tao and other scientists first proposed the concept of in situ in vivo bioprinting to solve the existing defects in traditional bioprinting. They said that by using the micro DELTA robot and the new concept of "in situ in vivo bioprinting" to carry out tissue repair in the body, they have taken a step towards a new method of treating gastric trauma. The study was published in Biomanufacturing.

In this study, researchers have developed a miniature bioprinting platform that can be installed on the endoscope for entering the human body and performing bioprinting. The design and manufacture of the platform adopts printed circuit and MEMS technology. They also developed a high-precision control system and conducted performance tests to verify the feasibility of the platform.