Tissue Engineering Of Human Nasal Alar Cartilageprecisely By Using3D Print

Background:Nasal defect is common in the field of plastic surgery and nasal reconstruction is challenging in plastic surgery. The most challenging work in nasal reconstruction should be the cartilage transplantation. As the requirement for precise outcome of nasal reconstruction is rising, people pay more and more attention to the delicate nasal aesthetic outcome, such as tip, alar and columella, etc. From the point of applied anatomy, the nasal alar cartilage, which forms the frame of the nose, directly affect the exact appearance of the nose. With the rapid development of cartilage tissue engineering technology, auricle cartilage tissue engineering has developed rapidly in recent20years. However, the research on the alar cartilage tissue engineering is rarely reported. On the other hand, with the gradually maturing of3-dimentional printing technology, it is more and more penetrated into all fields. The advantage of its rapid and accurate elaborating will provide strong support for alar cartilage tissue engineering.Objectives:1. We performed autopsy on the nasal cartilage from the corpses, combined with measurement and3-dimensional rapidly printing technologies. The aim is to set up a precise mold of cartilage. Then we confirm that whether the3-dimensional rapidly printing technology could improve the precise outline of the engineered alar cartilage.2. The histological analysis and biological characteristics analysis were performed on the engineered cartilage and human alar cartilage. Then we know the feasibility of performing3-dimentional technology on the procedure of engineering nasal alar cartilage.Methods, Result&Conclusion:1. We applied anatomy on the nasal alar cartilage which is dissected from the frozen fresh adult corpses. The measurements were performed on the lateral crus, fornix and middle crus. Statistical analyses, histological analysis and biomechanics were also performed.2. After fixed in10%neutral buffered formalin, the human nasal alar cartilage was scanned by CT. The mold of the cartilage was achieved by using 3D print and then the PGA/PLA scaffold of alar cartilage was obtained, which obtained most characteristics of the real one.3. Human nasal septum cartilage was obtained with informed consent from patients undergoing nasal septoplasty. Chondrocytes were resuspended, cultured in an incubator for4weeks in vitro and implanted into nude mice subcutaneously for8weeks. At8weeks post-implantation, they were harvested for further analysis. After subcutaneous implantation, the length and width of the samples and native cartilage were measured and there is no statistically difference between two groups.(P>0.05). The thickness of them were measured and statistical analyses were performed(P<0.05=. And its biomechanical properties are superior to the corresponding alar cartilage. The statistical analyses were also performed(P<0.05=. Histological examination of the engineered constructs revealed that both the cell and tissue morphological features of engineered cartilage were similar to those of native cartilage. The biomechanical properties of the engineered cartilage were exceeded those of native cartilage.This study demonstrates that3D-aided tissue engineering could achieve precisely three-dimensional shape of human nasal alar cartilage. To our knowledge this is the first reported creation of a precise nasal alar cartilage with tissue engineering strategy and3D print technique.