World-leading personalised medicine research combining regeneration and chemotherapy is being led by QUT’s Distinguished Professor Dietmar W Hutmacher.
Under an Advance Queensland grant, Professor Hutmacher (pictured) is directing a multidisciplinary team which is developing biomaterial (bioink) software and hardware to enable surgeons to use patient-specific 3D printed implants containing anti-cancer chemotherapy for implantation after mastectomy for breast cancer patients.
Professor Hutmacher said the highly porous, light-weight biodegradable scaffolds are combined with the patient’s own fat tissue.
“The chemotherapy drugs on the surface of the scaffold allow drugs to be delivered to the cancer site instead of the whole body as is the current practice,” he said.
The scaffold, which is 3D printed with a biodegradable polymer, combines the chemotherapy and the patient’s own cells obtained from liposuction of the thigh or abdomen, growth factor, and regenerative proteins isolated from the patient’s own blood.
Read more in Links, the QUT Alumni Magazine: http://www.links.qut.edu.au/portfolio/3d-printing-to-target-breast-cancer/
Media contact:
Karen Milliner, QUT Media, 07 3138 1841 or k.milliner@qut.edu.au
Aftern hours, Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au
