UK universities form spinout for biomedical 3D printing resins
The Universities of Birmingham and Warwick, both in the UK, have created a new spinout company, 4D Medicine Ltd, to commercialise a new class of materials.
The liquid resins can be printed into solid 3D scaffolds to help patients recover from major medical procedures more quickly.
The polycarbonate-based resins, developed by Professor Andrew Dove and Dr Andrew Weems at the University’s School of Chemistry, are bioresorbable materials with good shape memory, tunable mechanical and chemical properties and very promising tissue-healing performance.
The company has secured a £197k grant from Innovate UK and pre-seed investment of £281k from SFC Capital to develop a range of implantable medical devices. It will concentrate on scaling up materials production capabilities and on initial applications, including options for a prototype lumpectomy device to address the needs of an emerging market for patients who have undergone a surgical procedure that is used during breast cancer diagnosis, and as a first treatment option for women with early stage breast cancer.
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