Houston, Texas – Rice University seniors at the Brown School of Engineering set out to help doctors simplify the process of repairing fractured long bones in an arm or leg by inventing a mechanism that uses magnets to set things right.

The students who call themselves Drill Team Six chose the project pitched by Rice alumnus Dr. Ashvin Dewan, an orthopedic surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital, to simplify a procedure where titanium rods are placed inside broken bones to repair them.

The team won the top prize, Excellence in Engineering Award, at the school’s annual Engineering Design Showcase.

The student team – bioengineering majors Babs Ogunbanwo, Takanori Iida, Byung-UK Kang, and Hannah Jackson and mechanical engineering majors Will Yarinsky and Ian Frankel – learned from Dewan that surgeons require many X-rays to locate pre-drilled 5mm holes in the rod. The holes allow them to secure the rod to the bone fragments and hold them together.

The surgery typically requires doctors to insert the long rod with a guidewire inside into the end of the bone, drilling through marrow to align the fractured fragments. With that done, they depend on X-rays, experience and, if necessary, a bit of trial and error to drill long surgical screws through one side of the bone, thread it through the rod and secure it to the other side.

We want to reduce the number of X-rays, the surgeon’s time, the operating room time, the setup time, everything,” Yarinsky says.

The team would make the wire adjacent to the holes magnetic, because neither skin nor bone hinder a magnetic field.

“That way, the magnets hold their position and we can do the location process,” Frankel says. “Once we’ve found them and secured the rod, we remove the wire and the magnets with it.”

The exterior mechanism is a brace that can be securely attached to the arm or leg with Velcro. A mounted sensor can then be moved along the stiff, 3D-printed carbon-fiber rods or around the limb until it locates the magnet. Then, the angle of the sensor can be adjusted. As each of the three degrees of freedom come into alignment with the target, a “virtual LED” lights up on a graphic display wired to the sensor. Then, the sensor is removed and a drill keyed to the mechanism inserted.

“We do the angular part because the rod is not in the center of the leg, and the hole is not necessarily perpendicular to the surface,” Yarinsky notes. “The rod is about 10mm to 20mm thick and has a hole on one side and a hole on the other. We don’t want to hit the first hole at an angle where we miss the second and don’t go all the way through.”

Working at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), the team tested its device on a mannequin leg and what it called a “wooden leg,” a frame that allowed for mounting the rod with its magnetized wire and checking the accuracy of their system.

Before it can be used by clinicians, the team says the device will require U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

“I’m very impressed with what the team put together,” says Dewan, who earned a bioengineering degree at Rice in 2005. “Where we ended up is completely different from what we imagined, but kudos to these guys. They went through many different proposals and ideas and ended up running with the one that seemed most promising.”

Having been through the senior capstone process at Rice himself, Dewan was particularly impressed with how the program has grown.

“The OEDK got off the ground a few years after I graduated, and at that point, senior design projects were isolated to individual projects,” Dewan says. “I didn’t work with mechanical or other engineering disciplines. I love the way they have a multidisciplinary approach to tackling problems. I think it’s much more of a real-world experience for them.”

Ceramics Expo opens next week in to more than 3,000 executives, engineers, technical leaders, and industry peers for two days of innovation, networking, and knowledge sharing.

Danny Scott, event director, comments, “The overwhelmingly positive reaction to this year’s expo, now taking place over two action-packed days, is testament to the global reputation that has been garnered by Ceramics Expo over the last five years. By the time we open the doors on April 30, 2019, we expect an exhibit area featuring 300 companies from more than 25 countries. Covering ceramic science, the materials and manufacturing technologies, and the finished components, is what we’re all about and it’s a pretty unique offering.”

The exhibition will host the complete supply chain, from raw material suppliers to testing equipment to ceramic manufacturers, including CoorsTek, Corning, Morgan Advanced Materials, Kyocera, SCHOTT, and Saint-Gobain as well as first time appearances from 3M, Creatz3D, GE Global Research, Kennametal, Harris Corp., and Sasol.

Running alongside the exhibition, held at the I-X Center in Cleveland, Ohio, is the Ceramics Expo Conference where sessions explore future trends, manufacturing practices, and developments from the ceramic and glass industry. The agenda has been specially designed for engineers and decision makers from OEMs and Tier 1s in the medical, automotive, aerospace/defense, electronics, industrial, energy, and communication industries. Companies presenting include: Lockheed Martin, Ford Motor Company, NASA, General Electric Aviation, and Oak Ridge National Lab.

To help guide attendees through the exhibition hall, Ceramics Expo has created the Innovation Trail highlighting companies who are at the forefront of R&D, developing cutting-edge materials, technologies, and solutions for a range of ceramic applications. Exhibitors include 3M, Johnson Matthey, Saint-Gobain, and Corning. The Product Showcase will feature live demonstrations of new machinery, testing services, and analysis equipment from Ceramics Expo exhibitors including 3DCERAM-SINTO, Beckman Coulter, OptiPro Systems, and The Model Shop.

Ceramics Expo provides numerous opportunities to create new business connections such as the Tuesday evening networking reception taking place on the show floor from 4:30pm – 6:00pm, sponsored by GeoCorp. Also – a new addition for 2019 – is the dedicated B2B Matchmaking area. Using an online portal, attendees are able to optimize their time by pre-booking meetings with exhibitors and other attendees, which will then take place in the dedicated B2B area throughout the event.

ATI Industrial Automation will host an Automation Expo May 9, 2019 at its recently expanded and renovated headquarters in Apex, North Carolina. Customers, industry partners, and special guests attending the event can participate in discussions, see products, and learn about innovative automation.

To register and to find a detailed itinerary of the day’s events, including the presentation schedule, speakers and topics, travel and accommodations, and additional networking opportunities, click here.

In addition to the presentation agenda, an exhibition area will feature new products and live robotic displays, demonstrating how end-effector technology can be leveraged for improved productivity in a variety of applications

ATI’s headquarters facility is located at 1031 Goodworth Dr., Apex, NC 27539.

SCHUNK to hosts event on the same day in nearby Morrisville
SCHUNK is hosting a Technology Event at their nearby Morrisville, North Carolina, offices on May 9 as well. There will be complimentary transportation provided between both events. ATI and SCHUNK are delighted to host this celebration of automation and manufacturing technology in North Carolina.

• Register for ATI’s Automation Expo HERE.
• Register for the SCHUNK Technology Event HERE.

In a major medical breakthrough, Tel Aviv University researchers have printed the world's first 3D vascularized engineered heart using a patient's own cells and biological materials. Their findings were published in a study in Advanced Science.

Until now, scientists in regenerative medicine – a field positioned at the crossroads of biology and technology – have been successful in printing only simple tissues without blood vessels.

"This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles, and chambers," says Prof. Tal Dvir of TAU's School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology, who led the research for the study.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among both men and women in the United States. Heart transplantation is currently the only treatment available to patients with end-stage heart failure. Given the dire shortage of heart donors, the need to develop new approaches to regenerate the diseased heart is urgent.

"This heart is made from human cells and patient-specific biological materials. In our process these materials serve as the bioinks, substances made of sugars and proteins that can be used for 3D printing of complex tissue models," Dvir says. "People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels. Our results demonstrate the potential of our approach for engineering personalized tissue and organ replacement in the future."

Research for the study was conducted jointly by Prof. Dvir, Dr. Assaf Shapira of TAU's Faculty of Life Sciences and Nadav Moor, a doctoral student in Prof. Dvir's lab.

"At this stage, our 3D heart is small, the size of a rabbit's heart," Dvir explains. "But larger human hearts require the same technology."

For the research, a biopsy of fatty tissue was taken from patients. The cellular and a-cellular materials of the tissue were then separated. While the cells were reprogrammed to become pluripotent stem cells, the extracellular matrix (ECM), a three-dimensional network of extracellular macromolecules such as collagen and glycoproteins, were processed into a personalized hydrogel that served as the printing ink.

After being mixed with the hydrogel, the cells were efficiently differentiated to cardiac or endothelial cells to create patient-specific, immune-compatible cardiac patches with blood vessels and, subsequently, an entire heart.

According to Prof. Dvir, the use of native patient-specific materials is crucial to successfully engineering tissues and organs.

"The biocompatibility of engineered materials is crucial to eliminating the risk of implant rejection, which jeopardizes the success of such treatments," Dvir says. "Ideally, the biomaterial should possess the same biochemical, mechanical, and topographical properties of the patient's own tissues. Here, we can report a simple approach to 3D-printed thick, vascularized, and perfusable cardiac tissues that completely match the immunological, cellular, biochemical, and anatomical properties of the patient."

The researchers are now planning on culturing the printed hearts in the lab and teaching them to behave like hearts, Dvir says. They then plan to transplant the 3D-printed heart in animal models.

"We need to develop the printed heart further," he concludes. "The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract, but we need them to work together. Our hope is that we will succeed and prove our method's efficacy and usefulness.

"Maybe, in ten years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely."