Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I'm not
Speaker 1: a real doctor, but I am a real worm. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and I'm Lauren Volke Bam and our other
Speaker 1: co host, Joe McCormick is out today, but he will
Speaker 1: be back very soon. And in the meanwhile, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk three D printing because it's been like three days, yeah,
Speaker 1: or two and a half minutes, so you know, so
Speaker 1: three D printing. You may have heard us talk about
Speaker 1: this in such episodes as all the other ones we've done,
Speaker 1: but literally every episode they've ever done on Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: But we wanted to specifically look at three D printing
Speaker 1: in emerging fields of medicine, not and not in the
Speaker 1: way that you might think, because we have talked about
Speaker 1: three D printers being used to print things like joints,
Speaker 1: like a new knee joint or hip joint, and we've
Speaker 1: talked about three D printers to print even things like
Speaker 1: prosthetic arms or even in the further off in the future,
Speaker 1: because this is not a mature technology yet, but living
Speaker 1: organs using three D printers to print actual organs for
Speaker 1: transplant patients. Maybe possibly if we work a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff out, But stuff that is working right now
Speaker 1: in the incredible future that is today is a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, there's some more stuff that we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about that that is outside of those uses.
Speaker 1: So one of them is the concept of three D
Speaker 1: printed drugs, which I think we may have mentioned on
Speaker 1: a previous episode, But the reason we're bringing it back
Speaker 1: up now is that in August two thousand fifteen, the
Speaker 1: US Food and Drug Administration also known as the f
Speaker 1: d A, approved a three D printed drug for the
Speaker 1: first time ever called spritum or sprite um or it
Speaker 1: could be spit tom. It's also known as a the
Speaker 1: Tierra se tam cool. Yeah, it's it's a pill specifically
Speaker 1: designed to help treat patients who are suffering from seizures
Speaker 1: like epilepsy or other types of seizures. And and it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, they created it with a three D
Speaker 1: printer specifically because that technology lets them build a pill
Speaker 1: that's that's porous throughout that therefore can dissolve rapidly on
Speaker 1: contact and you know, get the medicine into the patient immediately. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things I was reading about
Speaker 1: because I was curious, I was like, well, so it
Speaker 1: dissolves better. Okay, so what but two things. One, for
Speaker 1: people who have seizures, it means they can get that
Speaker 1: medication in their system much more rapidly and prevent the
Speaker 1: onset of the seizures, stop it before it really starts.
Speaker 1: And another is that we're talking like seriously dissolving rapidly,
Speaker 1: so that people who have trouble swallowing pills, whether it's
Speaker 1: due to a medical issue or maybe it's a child
Speaker 1: who doesn't normally swallow pills, it's much easier to get
Speaker 1: the pill down than four people, you know, than are
Speaker 1: than a standard pill that would take a while to
Speaker 1: dissolve within the stomach itself. Oh sure. And furthermore, if
Speaker 1: if someone doesn't like swallowing pills, they're unlikely to take
Speaker 1: their medication as described, and this could help alleviate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called adherence, the concept of patients adhering to their medication,
Speaker 1: not sticking to it, but sticking with it. So in
Speaker 1: other words, they are more likely to continue taking their
Speaker 1: medication at the right time. Because it's not a completely
Speaker 1: unpleasant experience. Any of us who have had to take
Speaker 1: medications that are rough for one reason or another. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's the application itself, like it's an injection, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's the way it makes us feel afterward. You know,
Speaker 1: it takes an effort of will to continuously do that
Speaker 1: through the course of a medication, and it can get
Speaker 1: really hard on you psychologically. So anything that reduces that
Speaker 1: psychological burden on a patient is yeah. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: technology came out of m I T. Right, Yeah. M
Speaker 1: I T developed the actual three D printing technology. The
Speaker 1: company that makes the drug is Appreciate A Pharmaceuticals, and
Speaker 1: they ended up calling the specific implementation of this technology
Speaker 1: originally developed by m I T zip dose, So zip
Speaker 1: dose is how they call it, and it's a neat process.
Speaker 1: It first involves laying down a layer of powdered medicine.
Speaker 1: Then it applies a drop of liquid that binds the
Speaker 1: particles together and creates that first porous layer. So that's
Speaker 1: layer one of your medication. And if you've ever used
Speaker 1: a three D printer, you will see that it lays
Speaker 1: down a thin layer of plastic or some other material.
Speaker 1: The plastic is generally what the consumer ones use, and
Speaker 1: then it will lay another layer on top of that,
Speaker 1: and another one on top of that and build it
Speaker 1: layer by layer until you get a final product. Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, it's doing that but with the powdered
Speaker 1: medication and then a drop of liquid to buying stuff together.
Speaker 1: The neat thing about this is using this process, you
Speaker 1: can actually determine you can you can tailor each pill
Speaker 1: to have a specific amount of the active pharmacological drug
Speaker 1: in that stuff, right, which again makes it easier on
Speaker 1: the patient because the patient doesn't have to like split
Speaker 1: a pill in half, or you know, maybe they've got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different stuff that they have to
Speaker 1: take together. And this could potentially let you print a
Speaker 1: single pill to take something like that. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: means that like you might say, well, we want to
Speaker 1: give a certain number of milligrams of this as a dose.
Speaker 1: Normally we would get these one type of pills and
Speaker 1: cut them in half, like Lauren was saying, which is
Speaker 1: not always an exact science. If they give it to
Speaker 1: you to take to home, usually the pharmacologist will do it,
Speaker 1: you know, like the pharmacist will do it rather um
Speaker 1: they'll do it, do it for you. But but this
Speaker 1: way you print the pills specifically to the needs of
Speaker 1: the patient, meaning that down the road we could see
Speaker 1: personalized medicine where a very specific dosage is created for
Speaker 1: that person, and it may even be that that dosage
Speaker 1: needs to change over time, and that they could continuously
Speaker 1: print these pills so that they met the patient's needs
Speaker 1: throughout the course of the treatment. So it's a revolutionary
Speaker 1: step in that regard. Yeah, yeah, and it means you
Speaker 1: have incredible amount of control, So pretty neat. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Now some people are theorizing that it could be even
Speaker 1: neater than that. Yeah, Lee Cronin of the University of
Speaker 1: Glasgow said at a TED talk once he talked about
Speaker 1: the possibility of this being used to the extent that
Speaker 1: people could have the printers in their own homes. So
Speaker 1: a patient might be able to have a drug printer
Speaker 1: at home and instead of going out and pursue, you know,
Speaker 1: having to fill a prescription, having to go down to
Speaker 1: the pharmacy or chemist or whatever you call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you instead of having to go down there, you would
Speaker 1: instead have a doctor's prescription for an algorithm, and the
Speaker 1: algorithm would be whatever your printer would need to do
Speaker 1: to create the chemically the drug. So I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of chemical inks to pull from, and the combining
Speaker 1: of those chemical inks and various temperatures, etcetera would allow
Speaker 1: for the creation of the drugs. Now, this is very
Speaker 1: much a future oriented idea. It's for many reasons. I
Speaker 1: think future oriented is a polite way of putting Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we Lauren and I both think that this is probably
Speaker 1: if it does happen, it's going to have to overcome
Speaker 1: some significant hurdles, and not just technological hurdles, although there's
Speaker 1: certainly that right, well, certainly it's not like the three
Speaker 1: D printers that we have today. Even the most fabulous
Speaker 1: ones and the most fabulous labs are capable of molecularly
Speaker 1: combining stuff. That's a different issue. Yeah, So even if
Speaker 1: you had you know, forty different quote unquote inks, chemical inks,
Speaker 1: you know, you would have to design a printer that
Speaker 1: would be able to use all those properly to to
Speaker 1: build whichever drug you're specifically trying to make. Plus, then
Speaker 1: you also have to worry about well, let's say let's
Speaker 1: say that I do that. Let's say that I've built
Speaker 1: the printer. Okay, that's a really big step, because because
Speaker 1: right now what you're talking about is having like a
Speaker 1: tub of powdered drug that you give to a patient,
Speaker 1: which seems like a poor plan. Well, let's let's say
Speaker 1: that I've got let's say that we've worked this out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got I've gotta I've gotta somehow, I've got like
Speaker 1: a cartridge that has all the different chemical components for
Speaker 1: various drugs, and that the printer can can access these
Speaker 1: in the appropriate amounts to make a drug. But then,
Speaker 1: even then, even saying I've somehow solved that problem, which
Speaker 1: is a huge if you still have other issues like cleanliness,
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything contaminates that, then you've got a
Speaker 1: possible toxicity problem. I mean, imagine that you have to
Speaker 1: print like let's say it's for a family, and you're
Speaker 1: printing out drugs to treat one person who is elderly
Speaker 1: and needs a certain type of medication. But then your
Speaker 1: child falls sick and you need to be able to
Speaker 1: treat your child too. Yeah, and so so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you've got you've got Nana's heart medicine and
Speaker 1: little Susie's tail and all all in the same printer.
Speaker 1: What if there's crossover contamination and not not good time,
Speaker 1: super scary. So so there's there's that basic technological hurdle
Speaker 1: which maybe is not insurmountable, but certainly is not something
Speaker 1: that we can achieve right now. And the home Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just just the number of potential problems that I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of with this and and you know this this
Speaker 1: is nay saying, but but man, like you know, if
Speaker 1: they think of all the problems that you're normal like
Speaker 1: p L a plaster printer, yea, yeah, I think about
Speaker 1: the ones that we've had, like we've we've had some
Speaker 1: deformed chess pieces come out of our Yeah, but you know, right, like,
Speaker 1: but if if that kind of thing messes up you,
Speaker 1: you've wasted a tiny bit of plastic, right as opposed
Speaker 1: to a human life and some of your time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is it could be so dangerous and very
Speaker 1: expensive to make that kind of mistake. Right, So, even
Speaker 1: even if somehow we were to solve all that, we
Speaker 1: still have other issues. We've got ethical issues to consider.
Speaker 1: For example, what if someone gets hold of one of
Speaker 1: these and starts using it to make illicit drugs? Um Now,
Speaker 1: you could try and build protections in place to prevent
Speaker 1: that from happening. But here's the deal. When there is
Speaker 1: something technological out there that means it's hackable, that means
Speaker 1: people will find ways to manipulate that to some extent
Speaker 1: or another. They may not be able to completely revolutionize it,
Speaker 1: completely change it, but they might be able to nudge
Speaker 1: it enough to make a real problem happen. Certainly, so
Speaker 1: ethical and legal issues are here besides the technological ones.
Speaker 1: But either way, even even if this technology never sees
Speaker 1: that kind of application, uh, it's still it still has
Speaker 1: those those other upsides that we were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: like certainly for doctors and pharmacies and uh and it
Speaker 1: could also potentially help with with with with development of drugs. Yes,
Speaker 1: it means that you could prototype us much more quickly.
Speaker 1: If you were developing a drug and you want to
Speaker 1: test the efficacy, You want to find out what the
Speaker 1: actual pharmacological dosage is, the the what is the effective
Speaker 1: uh dose for treating whatever ailment it might be. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of trial and error. If you have
Speaker 1: a three D printing mechanism where you can say, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's print a pill that has you know, five
Speaker 1: milligrams of the effective drug in it, or one that
Speaker 1: has ten or fifteen, and then you can test each
Speaker 1: one to find out where those thresholds are both for
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of the drug and even the potential toxicity
Speaker 1: of the drug. Then that could make the medication uh
Speaker 1: much safer, much earlier than traditional methods and saving lab time.
Speaker 1: Is is a terrific way to get you know, cheaper drugs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's definitely in the news right now. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into it because BOYD made me mad, indeed,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about something that that person involved in
Speaker 1: that news story lax, which is hard. Yeah, that's very
Speaker 1: well put, Lauren. I like how civil we are being
Speaker 1: while we're both extremely angry about this. Um. Yes, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to ever give your heart to your sweetie,
Speaker 1: you could possibly do that by undergoing an m R
Speaker 1: I and then having that information mapped out and then
Speaker 1: printed in a three D model where you actually have
Speaker 1: a three D model of your heart. This would be
Speaker 1: the uh sort of the the Indiana Jones and the
Speaker 1: Temple of Doom method of giving your sweetheart. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like a little actually, I could if
Speaker 1: if this, if this technology ever ever grows to a
Speaker 1: consumer market, like I I know twenty people off the
Speaker 1: top of my head who would do it. Like, we
Speaker 1: know the same twenty people because lots of names. I
Speaker 1: mean a certain puppeteer we both know. Uh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: tons of many of them are artists. Yeah weird. But
Speaker 1: but but more more critically and to the point to
Speaker 1: this episode, this could be terrific for heart surgeons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is actually not the The idea of making
Speaker 1: a model of a heart for a surgeon to get
Speaker 1: a look at before performing surgery on a specific patient
Speaker 1: is not entirely new. Uh, that's something that's been done
Speaker 1: for a while. But the three D printing and the
Speaker 1: development of a new algorithm are making this a faster
Speaker 1: process that could save a lot of time. And for
Speaker 1: some patients, time is the difference between a lifesaving operation
Speaker 1: and sadly passing away. So so this could have a
Speaker 1: real difference. And uh, this all comes down to a
Speaker 1: partnership between M I T and Boston Children's Hospital and
Speaker 1: they started looking at a way to create three D
Speaker 1: printed hearts using a computer algorithm to build out as
Speaker 1: much of the heart as possible into a kind of
Speaker 1: a three D model so that could then be printed
Speaker 1: um and taking out the element as much as you
Speaker 1: could of having a human have to go by like
Speaker 1: frame by frame and check and make sure that everything
Speaker 1: matches up to probable reality based on these m r
Speaker 1: I scans. Yes, so m r I s when they
Speaker 1: when they do an m r I scan, you get
Speaker 1: a bunch of cross sections of a three dimensional object,
Speaker 1: and m r I s have light sections and dark
Speaker 1: sections that tell you about different tissues and different uh
Speaker 1: anatomical features. And generally speaking, the boundaries between the two
Speaker 1: tend to show a actual edge of an anatomical structure
Speaker 1: like an ajorda for example, but they don't always. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that border is deceptive, it's not actually an anatomical feature.
Speaker 1: So usually what would happen is experts would pour over
Speaker 1: these images and kind of manually tweak what they believed
Speaker 1: to be the actual boundaries of any anatomical feature of
Speaker 1: the heart so they could tell the three D printer
Speaker 1: what to do. Yeah, so this would take ten hours
Speaker 1: on average for experts to go over all the information.
Speaker 1: That's before you even sent it to be built. Right,
Speaker 1: So the m i T and Boston Children's Hospital partnership
Speaker 1: is all about creating this algorithm that can take a
Speaker 1: little bit of information from an expert and then extrapolate
Speaker 1: based on that information what the rest of the m
Speaker 1: r I actually means. And what they did was they
Speaker 1: divided the heart up into nine sections, and they had
Speaker 1: uh the expert give a little bit of information about
Speaker 1: each section, and then the algorithm took over from the
Speaker 1: From there, so while the algorithm knew a little bit
Speaker 1: about nine different sections of the heart, it had to
Speaker 1: extrapolate the rest and they found that it agreed uh
Speaker 1: at at nine of the experts belief of what was
Speaker 1: actually represented in the m r I, right, right, and
Speaker 1: and yeah, so it cut down this this eight to
Speaker 1: ten hour process, this full extra day that you're atting
Speaker 1: to the prep for surgery, down to to nothing that
Speaker 1: humans really had to do. Yeah, it's it's down to
Speaker 1: like an hour total just to build out the model
Speaker 1: and then another couple of hours to physically build the
Speaker 1: heart with the three D printer. So something that took
Speaker 1: ten hours just for the analysis now took three three
Speaker 1: to four hours total to have a finished model heart
Speaker 1: that the surgeon could then use to plan out uh
Speaker 1: surgical procedures right because you know, usually if someone is
Speaker 1: having heart surgery, it means that there's something irregular about
Speaker 1: the structure of their heart. So it's extra it's really
Speaker 1: really cool to to be able to have the surgeon
Speaker 1: who's going to be working with it. You know that
Speaker 1: the imaging alone is terrific, but being able to actually
Speaker 1: hold that image uh and hold that model and and
Speaker 1: poke into it with stuff, it has to be just incredible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the quotes that we saw
Speaker 1: around this was from Paulina Galand of m I T,
Speaker 1: a computer scientist with m I T, who said that
Speaker 1: the phrase I heard is that surgeons see with their hands.
Speaker 1: So a surgeon getting his or her hands on a
Speaker 1: model heart has a much better feel for what they
Speaker 1: need to do when the surgery is is when it's
Speaker 1: time to actually perform the surgery. So this is not
Speaker 1: something that's just being rushed into practice. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: being put into a very controlled test system. Yes, seven
Speaker 1: cardiac surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital are going to be
Speaker 1: working with this new technology right exactly, so no patients
Speaker 1: lives will be at risk. What they're doing is they're
Speaker 1: actually going to use ten cases that have already gone
Speaker 1: through treatment. So these are people who have already had
Speaker 1: surgical procedures done on them, and they're just using the
Speaker 1: data from those ten cases. So the patients are gone there,
Speaker 1: they've left the hospital, but their information remains. And so
Speaker 1: these seven cardiac surgeons are going to get these ten cases,
Speaker 1: which includes all the mri I data that was gathered
Speaker 1: about the different patients and will include either a physical
Speaker 1: model or a three D model that will be randomly
Speaker 1: determined on each case basis for each surgeon, and the
Speaker 1: source of the information for that physical model or three
Speaker 1: D model will either be from the traditional ten hours
Speaker 1: of expert analysis or through this computer algorithm. All of
Speaker 1: that's going to be randomly determined. I imagine they're going
Speaker 1: to do this in a double blind approach, so that
Speaker 1: none of the cardiac surgeons will be aware if the
Speaker 1: model they have came from the traditional method or through
Speaker 1: the algorithm. Then all the cardiac surgeons will describe what
Speaker 1: their process would be, what their plan would be for
Speaker 1: surgery for that particular case out of all the ten cases,
Speaker 1: and then what will happen is at the very end
Speaker 1: of it, they will start to compare what was actually
Speaker 1: done in the in the in cases, yeah, that the
Speaker 1: plan that the actual surgeons made with the traditional stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also what the outcome was, like did the model
Speaker 1: accurately represent what was really in that patient? And then
Speaker 1: after all of that, they're going to see if the
Speaker 1: algorithm three D approach is uh, is something that would
Speaker 1: be of value to the surgeons, right, something that that
Speaker 1: hypothetically would have created a better plan. Uh. It could
Speaker 1: also help reduce problems after surgery because sometimes prosthetic patches
Speaker 1: need to be be applied to the heart and of course,
Speaker 1: having you know, the wrong shape or the wrong size
Speaker 1: of patch, even even slightly off, can wind up causing
Speaker 1: damage like lesions and stuff like that from the line.
Speaker 1: And so this technology could let surgeons tailor three D
Speaker 1: printed patches to the patients a lot more easily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty cool stuff and uh so we really
Speaker 1: pleased when we saw this one. Also, if you get
Speaker 1: a chance to look at the stories, you can see
Speaker 1: the actual three D models have been printed and they're
Speaker 1: pretty funky looking. They're they're a little bit gruesome. I
Speaker 1: like them a lot. Yeah, I want Yeah, you wonder
Speaker 1: if you can actually request what color plastic they're going
Speaker 1: to print yours in probably clear all around, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah they had a bluish tinge but I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: if that was just the background there, and and and
Speaker 1: the three D printed models are just made of conventional plastics. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not made out of anything particularly bizarre or icky.
Speaker 1: But something that is made of particular stuff is our
Speaker 1: third and final story in our three D Printed Medicine
Speaker 1: kind of uh episode, which is this idea of creating
Speaker 1: three D printed scaffolding specifically to encourage nerve regeneration in
Speaker 1: the wake of injury or illness. Yeah, because when your
Speaker 1: nerves are damaged, that that sucks. Yeah. You could be
Speaker 1: in severe pain or even suffer paralysis as a result
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, and it and it can be very
Speaker 1: difficult to get nerves to regrow, especially through damaged tissue,
Speaker 1: which tends to be the case when you have had
Speaker 1: nerve damage. Yeah, so it's a a very tough problem.
Speaker 1: And so we can we've seen some ways where people
Speaker 1: have have tried to address nerve damage. We've seen some
Speaker 1: surgical attempts that involve grafting healthy nerves in the area
Speaker 1: where there was nerve damage, and that that's exactly what
Speaker 1: sounds like. A surgeon will take healthy nerves from one
Speaker 1: part of your body and then graph them onto the
Speaker 1: nerves in your damaged or ill part of your body,
Speaker 1: whichever parts suffered the nerve damage in the first place. Right.
Speaker 1: But there can be a lot of problems with with that.
Speaker 1: You know, the graft can be rejected by by your
Speaker 1: body sometimes, right, or also you could have lasting pain
Speaker 1: and the sight of where they harvested the nerves in
Speaker 1: the first place. So, in other words, you've just traded
Speaker 1: where the nerve damage has because you're you're losing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's not ideal. Yeah. And and the
Speaker 1: plus you have to have two surgeries in that you
Speaker 1: have to have one on the site where they're harvesting
Speaker 1: and one on the site where they need to implant it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course limiting that kind of invasion is one
Speaker 1: of the major points of modern medicine. Yeah, because, as
Speaker 1: we know, anytime you have any kind of surgical incision,
Speaker 1: you are opening up the opportunity for infection. And obviously,
Speaker 1: the fewer surgeries that are required to address any one
Speaker 1: problem the better, right, as long as they're effective. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't want to undergo ineffective medical procedures for well,
Speaker 1: we thought we would put a horse in this one.
Speaker 1: We dipped her in a pond. Uh didn't seem to help,
Speaker 1: but it was at least entertaining. So there's there's an
Speaker 1: alternate area of research besides nerve grafting, which involves building
Speaker 1: channels for nerves to grow through the idea being that
Speaker 1: you can create these pathways for the nerves, plus incorporate
Speaker 1: proteins within those channels that encourage nerve growth so that
Speaker 1: you can kind of egg this regeneration process along going.
Speaker 1: And you can do that without the use of three
Speaker 1: D imaging and printing. However, if you use three D
Speaker 1: imaging and printing, you can you can fit the channels
Speaker 1: specifically to a patient's body, again, therefore making the whole
Speaker 1: thing much more effective, especially if you're trying to correct
Speaker 1: a larger complex area of damage, right, because nerve pathways
Speaker 1: can be geometrically complex, and in fact, that's what the
Speaker 1: experts who were the researchers who are trying to build
Speaker 1: out these three D printed nerve pathways are doing. They
Speaker 1: specifically want to look at, uh complex geometrical patterns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not like in illustrations in your elementary
Speaker 1: school health books where all the nerves just go in
Speaker 1: a single straight line right down all your limbs, little
Speaker 1: linear nerve and then everything else works just fine. You know.
Speaker 1: It gets a little more complex than that. It's not
Speaker 1: like the streets of New York. It's not a it's
Speaker 1: not a basic grid. No. No, it's more like Atlanta
Speaker 1: where you make a wrong turn and you end up
Speaker 1: in Alabama because you couldn't figure out how they get
Speaker 1: back to where you were, and then on another street
Speaker 1: named peach Tree, all Peachtree. Uh so yeah, this this
Speaker 1: approach is really interesting. They end up scanning a nerve,
Speaker 1: which involves a little invasiveness. The way they did it
Speaker 1: with mice was that they made an incision and then
Speaker 1: used a light scanner to get a three dimensional model
Speaker 1: of a nerve's pathway. Um, so obviously they had to
Speaker 1: expose the nerve first to get this image. Then they
Speaker 1: were able to create this three D printed channel out
Speaker 1: of silicone was the main material, but then they also
Speaker 1: included proteins that would be used to encourage the growth
Speaker 1: of nerves and also to quote unquote explain to the nerve, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to split here. We need run channel going
Speaker 1: this way and one going this way. So that was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Uh, you know, it's it's it seems to
Speaker 1: be working as a proof of con except we are
Speaker 1: still years away from this potentially potentially at least years
Speaker 1: away from this being used for humans. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not even in human testing yet. Now, we're in
Speaker 1: petri dish and my mouse territory right now. But it
Speaker 1: does seem like this could potentially help people regenerate nerves
Speaker 1: further down the line, which would be fantastic for people
Speaker 1: who suffer from these these kind of debilitating injuries. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that to me is a really cool story too.
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of really interesting ones pop up recently.
Speaker 1: All three of these actually are are recent stories that
Speaker 1: popped up in our news feed, and we just thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting that that three different applications of three
Speaker 1: D printing that are so different but but have so
Speaker 1: much hope for for really improving doctors and in patients lives. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we just thinking that we needed to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about this. It was it was the right time
Speaker 1: to do it. Also, it's really nice to occasionally talk
Speaker 1: about happy stuff. Yeah, not not about how you know
Speaker 1: something is as an existential threat. That is nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear now now in the interest
Speaker 1: of full disclosure, Uh, the week following the one that
Speaker 1: we're recording this episode on, I will be on vacation.
Speaker 1: So I can't wait to find out what kind of
Speaker 1: world destroying bugs you guys will be talking about when
Speaker 1: I come back. Yeah, because every time I come back,
Speaker 1: it's either about the world coming to an end or bugs. Look,
Speaker 1: bugs are the future, they're also the past. They're also everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I've been having a house fly problem at I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: That's that's that is that. I hope that's not the
Speaker 1: future for you. Every time I every time I get
Speaker 1: rid of one, I find two more, and it's starting
Speaker 1: to really get to me. I would say, bug me.
Speaker 1: But you know I'm above such things, all right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: well I still made the joke. I just got to
Speaker 1: pretend like it was above it. But yeah, this concludes
Speaker 1: our discussion. If you guys have any thoughts about three
Speaker 1: D printing something that maybe we haven't covered yet, that
Speaker 1: you think. Hey, you know, I can't believe you guys
Speaker 1: have done twenty episodes of three D printing and not
Speaker 1: talked about this. Let us know because we love talking
Speaker 1: about it. Also, if you have any other topics, anything
Speaker 1: else that you want to know about how is this
Speaker 1: going to work in the future, send us your suggestion.
Speaker 1: We love hearing from you, guys. Our email address is
Speaker 1: fw Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook.
Speaker 1: At Twitter and Google Plus, we are f W Thinking.
Speaker 1: Just search f W Thinking and Facebook, our profile will
Speaker 1: pop right up. You can leave us a message there
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon for
Speaker 1: more on this topic and the future of technology. This
Speaker 1: is forward Thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's go places,