A team of researchers in China has reached a new technique for treating stomach ulcers instead of the traditional methods currently in force, such as laparoscopic surgery.
The "Science Daily" website, a specialist in technology, quoted researcher Tao Chu from Tsinghua University in Beijing as saying that "stomach wall wounds are a common problem in the human digestive tract, and about 12 percent of the world´s population suffers from them to varying degrees."
He explained that "activating the bioprinting technology to directly inject stomach wounds with live cells is a very useful way to treat this health problem."
He added that the difficulty facing this problem is that the bioprinting techniques currently in place are focused on the external sites of the body, given that bioprinters are usually large in size, and they cannot usually be used on internal tissues without invasive surgeries that need enough spaces to complete the printing process. .
The study team developed a tiny robot that is inserted into the human body by a surgical endoscope in order to carry out the electronic printing process to treat ulcers or any wounds in the stomach wall.
The robot consists of a fixed base installed on a moving platform, and it can fold while entering the body, before returning to its normal size to perform the printing process.
The researcher, Tao Chu, said, "Initial experiments have shown promising success for this technique, as the cells that were injected into the stomach wall retained their vitality over ten days in a stable condition, which indicates the possibility of these implanted cells succeeding in treating stomach wounds in the long term."
He stated that the next stage of the study will focus on reducing the size of the robot that is used in printing, and improving the quality of the vital inks used.
