I can extract side effects - Chapter 642

c638 3D printing bracket

“Baby, I’m so sleepy.”

Xue Shen stood in front of the window, looking into the distance, then yawned and said.

“So sleepy, did you become a thief last night?” A delicate voice came from the phone.

“Yes, to steal your heart.” Xue Shen spit out these words with a deep face, which drew giggling laughter from the other side.

Suddenly, two sounds of “cough cough” sounded at the door, bringing him back to reality from the affectionate world.

Xue Shen glanced at the door, and quickly said to the other end of the phone: “Baby, I am in a hurry to have a meeting and talk later.”

Before the other party could speak, he hung up the phone in a hurry.

After tidying up his turbulent mood, he came to the desk and put on a serious smile.

“Director Chen, a distinguished guest is coming, what do you want from me?”

Chen Yiqing looked at him with a half-smile: “I’m sorry to disturb Director Xue.”

Seeing that Xue Shen blushed and his expression became a little coy, he slowly expressed the purpose of this trip.

“Nerve regeneration scaffolds? That’s a very innovative idea.”

The two sat down on the sofa, Xue Shen handed over a cup of hot tea, looked through the rising white steam, and said thoughtfully.

But he didn’t continue to talk, but asked back.

“I heard that your stem cell therapy is very popular. ALS is a hot topic now. Why don’t you continue to work on it? Instead, come here to tinker with this neural scaffold?”

Chen Yiqing smiled lightly: “Actually, the stem cell therapy is mainly the result of Ding Mian. I didn’t put in much effort. I just used it for doctrine. This nerve scaffold is my own thing.”

Xue Shen nodded approvingly: “As expected of Director Chen, he has his own ideas.”

His expression became serious: “According to what you said, the material and structure of this nerve scaffold are very important.”

“The material must have a certain shaping ability, otherwise it will not be able to form a hollow structure, and it will be difficult to adapt to the complex spinal cord environment to guide the growth of neurons, and it must be soft enough not to damage the surrounding uninjured tissue. cause damage.”

“Considering the biocompatibility and the decomposability of materials after nerve injury recovery, I personally prefer biomaterial scaffolds.”

“The material needs to mimic natural spinal cord tissue so that it can be easily filled with neural stem cells, essentially filling the gap left by the injury.”

“Consider a collagen-based biomimetic hydrogel, which is injected in liquid form through a needle, and immediately condenses into a complex network of nanofibers in the body, mimicking the extracellular matrix of the spinal cord, providing mechanical support for scaffolds, and providing neural stem cells Provide the right growing environment.”

“As for the structure, it can simulate the porous structure of spinal cord tissue to better meet the electrical signal conduction requirements of the spinal cord.”

The more Xue Shen talked, the more excited he was. He took out a tablet computer from the desk drawer, opened the drawing software, held a capacitive pen, and began to draw on it.

“You see, there are three permutations for a highly porous scaffold.”

“The first is a parallel arrangement structure, where the holes are arranged regularly, just like the cross-section of a stack of chopsticks.”

Chen Yiqing interjected: “Spinal nerve bundles are such a parallel structure, but axon regeneration cannot form a network, which is not conducive to nerve electrical signal transmission.”

Without raising his head, Xue Shen said while drawing, “That’s right, so this kind of painting is inappropriate.”

“The second type is similar to the third type, but the former is a pore network of irregular size, which is relatively simple, while the latter is a highly regular pore network, which is a bit more complicated.”

Chen Yiqing looked at the graphics on the screen and thought deeply: “The size of these holes should be larger than the neural stem cells, otherwise it will be difficult for the cells to pass through, and they will not be able to provide nutrients for the growth of the cells.”

“In this way, is it better to have a highly regular pore network, with larger pores that allow more cells to crawl in the pores?”

Xue Shen nodded: “There is indeed a problem with holes of different sizes. Maybe smaller holes will prevent cells from growing through.”

“Anyway, the size of nerve cells is known. I will make a 3D model and simulate it on the computer.”

Chen Yiqing couldn’t restrain his excitement: “Then what are you waiting for, do it now, or do you have something to do soon?”

Xue Shen opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but closed his mouth silently.

After a long time, he let out a muffled snort: “It’s okay, I’ll do it for you now.”

It took more than an hour for the two to make a simple 3D model on the computer and conduct a preliminary AI simulation.

This is also a fixed process of medical research. It is first simulated on the computer, the results are calculated, and then synthesized in the laboratory for subsequent experiments.

Seeing the words “During simulation…” appearing on the screen, Xue Shen finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He glanced at Chen Yiqing, who was looking at the structure diagram he had drawn, thinking hard.

So he quietly took out the mobile phone that was turned to silent, opened it, and suddenly felt a tremor in his liver.

My girlfriend has sent me more than a dozen text messages, all of which are acting like a baby. Since I haven’t received a reply for a long time, my tone has gradually escalated, and I have fallen into a frenzy.

He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, danced his fingers for a while, and knocked out a long paragraph of sweet words in one breath.

Click send, and add the last sentence.

“Baby, I’m going into the lab right away. I can’t bring my mobile phone with me. I put it in the cabinet.”

Then resolutely, he threw the phone directly into the drawer.

Chen Yiqing sat upright, watching his ears, nose, nose, and heart, with a look of concentration.

In fact, his ears had already been pricked up, and his eyes flicked from the corner of his eye, seeing all of Xue Shen’s movements.

He couldn’t help snickering in his heart, secretly sighing “Young people’s love, that’s how you and I are sticky”, but the expression on his face still remained calm and calm.

Xue Shen picked up the cup, poured a large cup of cold tea, looked up at the screen, and jumped up.

“The simulation results are out.”

When Chen Yiqing heard this, he immediately looked over.

In front of the screen, two thick-haired heads were tightly pressed together, silent for a long time.

After a long time, Chen Yiqing nodded heavily and let out an exclamation.

“Sure enough, neurons grew more rapidly in the bioscaffolds containing larger pores.”

“Despite the same average pore size and chemical composition of the two materials, more infiltration of regenerative nerves was found in the scaffolds with regular pore shapes.”

“The latter can greatly improve cell infiltration, gene delivery, nerve electrical signal transmission, and tissue repair after spinal cord injury.”

Xue Shen laughed and rubbed his hands excitedly.

“My idea is right, next, let’s go to the laboratory!”

“Wait, the basic structure is there, but how do you make it?” Chen Yiqing asked puzzled.

“Of course it’s biological 3D printing. Why don’t you know?”

Chen Yiqing shook his head: “I’ve heard of it, but it’s large-scale 3D printing, such as architectural printing, and various models. How can microstructures be 3D printed?”

“Of course, the traditional 3D printing method of biological tissue is really not very good at building complex 3D microstructures, so I built a new machine and developed a new micro-scale continuous projection printing method.”

“Wow, so awesome?” Chen Yiqing listened to this long list of high-ranking nouns, showing an expression of incomprehension, and at the same time, a faint sense of excitement.

“Go, let’s take you to see him well.”

Xue Shen patted his chest and led the joyful Chen Yiqing into the laboratory.

“This is a micron-scale 3D printer that can print features as small as 1.5 microns, which is only one-fifth the size of a red blood cell.”

“It is several times smaller than commercial 3D printers, but retains the high printing speed of commercial printers, and is more than 100 times faster than other advanced high-resolution 3D printing methods suitable for microfabrication.”

Xue Shen pointed to a machine with a strange shape on the operating table, and introduced it eloquently.

This is a metal device that looks extremely simple, its structure is clear at a glance, its size is much smaller than Chen Yiqing imagined, it looks more like a boxy metal shelf.

Four one-meter-high thick tubes are placed vertically on a metal plate. The tubes are divided into four layers. A large plastic box is placed at the upper and lower ends. The upper ones are painted khaki, and the lower ones are painted with a layer. Gray lacquer, the two colors clearly distinguish the case.

The box at the bottom is connected to a few thick tubes, painted in various fluorescent greens, and I don’t know what it is for.

On the second floor is a black tube connected to a laptop computer via a red wire.

Chen Yiqing stared blankly at the simple and crude equipment in front of him, unable to speak for a while.

Some high-tech bubbles in my mind were instantly shattered.

If it weren’t for Xue Shen’s plausible words, he would have thought that the interns used the discarded materials in the laboratory to practice their hands to build such a wonderful machine.

It’s a bit too outrageous.

Rough manufacturing is not enough to describe this equipment, and it is cleaner than garbage. It belongs to the kind that cannot be sold even if it is sold as scrap.

He stood in front of the machine, his expression changing, and there were ten thousand grass and mud horses galloping past in his heart.

Xue Shen didn’t notice it at all, and just swiped through the device and started the machine on his own.

After a while, the machine roared and buzzed, which gave Chen Yiqing a deeper impression of its shoddy workmanship.

And Xue Shen came to the machine and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, explaining the workflow excitedly.

“It is based on a digital light processing engine, and it also uses adaptive optics technology, which can be used to enhance the image difference of optical devices such as lenses.”

“It was developed mainly to meet the growing needs of submicron manufacturing. Nanolab already has some rapid prototyping needs for custom submicron parts, requiring parts that are not limited by geometric or organic shapes.”

“So, we can only develop such a machine by ourselves.”

“Of course, it’s not all due to me. Wang Dali also contributed a lot.”

“He’s researching that surgical robot, and he’s almost done, and he’s also applied some optical technology to it.”

“I have a ready-made collagen hydrogel here, and I did modeling just now. I have the materials and drawings, so let’s print a model first.”

Chen Yiqing listened in a daze, without saying a word.

“Of course, there must be no neural stem cells in it now…”

Suddenly, the machine beeped three high-pitched beeps and then stopped.

Chen Yiqing sighed, and said with some regret: “After all, something went wrong.”

But Xue Shen picked up something from the metal plate excitedly and shouted.

“Haha, in 2 seconds, a 3D bionic hydrogel scaffold suitable for the size of the rodent spinal cord was printed.”

He stretched out his palm and carefully handed it to Chen Yiqing.

“Come on, let’s take a look at the 2mm nerve scaffold.”

“Ah?” Chen Yiqing was stunned.

What the hell, a nerve scaffold was printed in 2 seconds?

It took him 5 seconds before he came back to his senses and looked intently at Xue Shen’s palm.

“Your sister, I really let you figure it out.”

Scanning the eyes for a while is like looking for the monkey grandson on the palm of the Tathagata Buddha.

After finally finding the 2mm colloidal fragment, he couldn’t help but swear.

Because this small well-shaped fragment is really too similar to the cross section of the spinal cord.

Chen Yiqing stretched out two fingers, pinched the nerve support gently, and looked at it carefully.

He can indeed see some hole structure from the transparent jelly, which he is quite satisfied with.

It’s just that the inside is hollow and not filled with neural stem cells, so it’s not considered a nerve scaffold, it can only be called a glial spinal cord scaffold.

He looked and looked, observed for a full minute, and then reluctantly put it down.

“Such a thing, plugged in the broken spinal cord, might really work.” He turned his head and looked at the crude machine, hesitating to speak.

“It’s your machine, it looks too rough.”

“Did you just take a few pipes and make it yourself? At least find a decent manufacturer to polish it.”

Xue Shen didn’t take it seriously, and casually said: “It’s okay, as long as it can be used, why bother so much.”

“Machine, rough guy style is the real mechanical aesthetics.”

Chen Yiqing took a deep breath, and suddenly had nothing to say.

Although he has some obsessive-compulsive disorder in pursuit of perfection, this machine is a bit of an eyesore no matter how you look at it.

But thinking about what Xue Shen said was right, he looked away and asked another question.

“Can the accuracy be guaranteed? If stem cells are to be implanted, how should they be used?”

Xue Shen waved and called him over.

“Hehe, this is not a problem. Come here, I will show you the 3D model of the machine, and you will understand after you take a look.”

“However, I still need to study the model again. Now that there is a hydrogel, but what the performance and structure are, I really don’t know without doing experiments.”

“Let’s try it on rats first.”

“I remember you have a high-precision MRI in your laboratory? I don’t have one. It seems that animal experiments have to be done in your laboratory.”

This made Chen Yiqing excited.

“I think it’s okay. I also have some opinions on this point. We can discuss it together.”

At the moment, the two of you have a sentence, and I have a sentence, discussing the specific experimental plan in detail.