NUS breakthrough combines AI with 3D bioprinting for custom gum grafts, eliminating painful tissue harvesting.
Scientists at Singapore’s National University (NUS) have developed a 3D-printed graft that is personalized to individual patients to encourage the regeneration of gum tissue lost to problems such as periodontal disease and injury.
Developed by the team led by Assistant Professor Gopu Sriram from the NUS Faculty of Dentistry, the technique serves as an alternative to existing grafting techniques, where a patient’s tissue is harvested from the mouth.
The new development should benefit such dental procedures as repairing gum defects from periodontal disease or problems from dental implants. The approach has the potential to enhance therapeutic responses and decrease pain and discomfort in patients by creating patient-tailored tissue constructs.
“Our study is among the first to specifically integrate 3D bioprinting and AI technologies for the biofabrication of customised oral soft tissue constructs,” said Sriram, who also serves as Thrust Co-Lead at NUS Centre for Additive Manufacturing.
The researchers developed a specialized bio-ink supporting cell growth while ensuring accurate printing. Typically, optimizing 3D bioprinting parameters requires extensive trial-and-error experiments, but the team integrated AI to streamline this process.
“This approach greatly streamlines the process by reducing the number of experiments needed to optimise the bioprinting parameters – from potentially thousands to just 25 combinations,” said Professor Dean Ho, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at NUS and co-corresponding author of the research.
The next step is to apply these results in the clinical setting. The team intends to pursue in vivo testing to evaluate graft integration in the oral cavity and investigate blood vessels integration by multi-material bioprinting.
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The research could significantly advance regenerative dentistry while opening possibilities for broader applications in tissue engineering, according to the university.
