Grigorianaitė Goda, Borodinas Sergėjus, Zigmantaitė Vilma, Limanovskaja Karolina, Andrijec Dovilė, Kilikevičius Artūras, Vainorius Darius, Pautienius Arnoldas, Jonušauskas Linas
Vital3D Technologies, Saulėtekio Ave. 15, 10224, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Department of Applied Mechanics, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Saulėtekio Ave. 11, 10223, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 2;15(1):22736. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-07190-4.
Stents are medical devices used to treat the narrowing of the blood vessel, most commonly caused by atherosclerosis. Currently used bare-metal, drug-eluting stents are limited in size and architectural complexity, and there are a few risks associated with these medical devices. In some cases stents can cause thrombosis or even death. Furthermore, said risk increases while stenting relatively small vessels. This paper shows that vascular stents for relatively small vessels and/or for patient-specific stenting applications can be printed using two-photon polymerization (2PP). 2PP is an additive manufacturing technique with sub-μm resolution and unlimited 3D geometry potential. These capabilities were used to produce stents for small blood vessels, which are 5 mm tall and 0.7 or 0.9 mm in diameter, with 3D struts as thin as 50 μm. Several novel approaches were introduced to accommodate the printing of such a structure like voxel elongation and printing in stereolithography-like vat-sample holder configuration. Furthermore, the produced stents were tested mechanically proving their mechanical resilience to most common types of mechanical deformations. Experimental results were also compared to mathematical modeling, showing excellent agreement, hinting at the possibility of designing and testing complex micro-stent geometries before fabrication in silico. Finally, biocompatibility experiments were performed, in which rats survived the 7-day incubation period and showed no significant biocompatibility issues. Overall, the presented work gives an outlook on all aspects related to the 3D printing of stents - design, manufacturing, mechanical, and biological testing. We show that 2PP aligns very well with all these aspects and is a promising technique for the mass manufacturing of vascular stents for small vessels or specifically for the patient.
支架是用于治疗血管狭窄的医疗设备，血管狭窄最常见的原因是动脉粥样硬化。目前使用的裸金属支架、药物洗脱支架在尺寸和结构复杂性方面存在局限，并且这些医疗设备存在一些风险。在某些情况下，支架可能会导致血栓形成甚至死亡。此外，在为相对较小的血管植入支架时，上述风险会增加。本文表明，用于相对较小血管和/或针对特定患者的支架植入应用的血管支架可以使用双光子聚合（2PP）技术进行打印。2PP是一种增材制造技术，具有亚微米级分辨率和无限的三维几何形状潜力。利用这些能力制造出了用于小血管的支架，其高度为5毫米，直径为0.7或0.9毫米，三维支柱细至50微米。引入了几种新颖的方法来适应这种结构的打印，如体素伸长以及在类似立体光刻法中的桶形样品架配置中进行打印。此外，对所生产的支架进行了机械测试，证明它们对大多数常见类型的机械变形具有机械弹性。实验结果还与数学建模进行了比较，显示出极好的一致性，这暗示了在计算机模拟制造之前设计和测试复杂微支架几何形状的可能性。最后，进行了生物相容性实验，实验中大鼠在7天的潜伏期内存活下来，并且没有显示出明显的生物相容性问题。总体而言，所展示的工作对支架三维打印的各个方面——设计、制造、机械和生物测试——进行了展望。我们表明，2PP在所有这些方面都非常匹配，并且是一种用于大规模制造小血管或特定患者血管支架的有前景的技术。
