South Korean scientists have re-engineered a basic arts and crafts glue gun to print bones onto fractured limbs—literally.
That little flimsy plastic gun you keep in your arts and crafts drawer, which you used to bedazzle thrift store denim jackets, has been reengineered by a team of smarty-pants to print three-dimensional bone grafts onto the shattered femurs of poor little rabbits.
Published in the journal Device, researchers at Sungkyunkwan University bypassed the usual long, expensive process of manufacturing metal or donor bone implants by bringing some physical engineering to the world of bioengineering.
They created what they call an “in situ printing system,” meaning surgeons can now apply bone-graft material directly into a break, in real-time, during surgery, without waiting on imaging or modeling.
Basically, if you’ve ever used a glue gun, it’s the same process, just instead of glue coming out the tip, it’s goopy liquid bone.
Forget Screws: Scientists Use a Glue Gun to Heal Broken Bones
The team swapped out your standard glue stick for hydroxyapatite, a material found in our bones, and polycaprolactone, a biocompatible plastic with a low-melting point. This glue blend can be fine-tuned on the fly as necessary, allowing surgeons or others to tweak the ratio to adjust the graft’s hardness and durability.
In tests on rabbits with severe leg fractures, the glue gun approach led to better bone regrowth, fewer infections, and faster surgeries. The handheld design means surgeons can adjust angle, depth, and direction mid-op, basically freehanding custom bone structures like Michelangelo with a heat gun.
There are some people out there who are masters of the glue gun. One day, those same people might be using those arts and craft skills to mend your broken arm.
In a press release, Associate Professor and study co-author Jung Seung Lee boasted that the entire process can be completed in a matter of minutes. He envisions a future with faster surgeries that result in fewer side effects.
Sounds great. It sounds even better when you realize that fewer side effects means it could, potentially, have the knock-on effect of reducing the need for antibiotics, thus reducing antibiotic resistance, something that would benefit the patient but humanity as a whole.
The team is scaling up their trials to larger animals with the ultimate goal of bringing their bone healing hot glue gun into a human operating room. Maybe before they knock you out, ask them if they can re-glue your kid’s model solar system science fair project while they’re at it.
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