US Army Aims To Produce 3D-Printed Skin To Help Treat Soldiers
The US Army is exploring the technology of bioprinting, which involves 3D printing human tissues using living cells, proteins and nutrients as raw materials, to treat the wounds of soldiers and save their lives, the official site of the US Department of Defence said. The US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC) has collaborated with the University of Hawaii System on two initiatives in order to leverage biomaterials and advanced manufacturing.
The project is under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) and two initial joint work statements (JWS), according to the US Army.
From organ-on-a-chip scientific tools to manufacturing and repair capabilities, the two organisations would work on various life-saving initiatives to support the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), which is headquartered in Hawaii.
Dr Jason Barnhill, who is an associate research professor at the John A Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM), at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will work with Priscilla Lee, a DEVCOM CBC bioengineering researcher, to develop organ models for assessing various compounds under the first JWS.
As quoted in the official report, Sam Shomaker, dean of the University of Hawaii at Manoa JABSOM, said, "We are incredibly proud that Dr. Barnhill and Priscilla Lee are representing the University of Hawaii at Manoa and DEVCOM CBC with these efforts that have the potential to save the lives of our frontline Soldiers and civilians across the world."
"By helping to introduce innovative biofabrication technology to even more remote areas, JABSOM is assisting in the mission across the Pacific and globally," Shomaker added.
The official report mentions that Lee's focus is on bioprinting cell culture models with an aim to understand immune responses and develop next-generation biomaterials for various uses.
The project aims to enhance the current in vitro organ models with the help of bioprinting. The researchers believe that the bioprinting technology would help soldiers in treatments for burns, exposure to poisonous gases, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and more such threats.
What is bioprinting?
As mentioned earlier, bioprinting is the process of creating 3D, cellular structures using bio-inks to make functional, biological replicas of body parts. If successful, the process could be a massive milestone in the area of organ transplantation. For example, if a person needs a new heart, imagine scientists taking cells from that person to create an entire new organ.
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The Hindu
4 days ago
- The Hindu
The Stethoscope and the Pen
Published : Jun 18, 2025 17:39 IST - 6 MINS READ Dear reader, This begins, as most things do in medicine, with a case history. In the late 19th century, one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was not a lexicographer or a linguist, but a doctor: Dr William Chester Minor. He was a retired US Army surgeon. He lived in an asylum for the criminally insane after committing a murder in a fit of paranoid delusion. There, amid hallucinations and despair, he sent thousands of entries to the OED's editor, James Murray. The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words by British writer Simon Winchester tells the story in vivid detail. It is ironic that the English language—especially its modern variant in which you're reading this newsletter—bears the imprint of a doctor who had both healed and harmed. No wonder, then, that so many doctors handle language with surgical precision. And they have produced quite an impressive line-up of literary works that continue to amaze us. Physician-writers have long been among our most haunting chroniclers. Greek physician Hippocrates, known more for his oath than his prose, left behind case notes that can be read like proto-stories: terse, elliptical, full of mystery. During the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) wrote The Canon of Medicine, but also philosophical treatises that were poetic. Conversely, one of his most popular works has such a curiously Instagram-ish title—The Book of Healing—that reels will be made on it if Gen Z discovers it. In 11th-century Italy, Trotula of Salerno, a female physician, wrote pioneering texts on women's medicine, interspersed with interesting takes that today read as proto-feminist. Jump forward to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and we find a string of European doctor-writers—Chekhov in Russia, deeply attuned to the moral fevers of society; Axel Munthe in Sweden, whose The Story of San Michele mingled ghost story, travelogue, and psychological insight with wry, clinical detachment. 'A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself,' Munthe wrote. Doctors, it is said, are like priests. They see men at their worst and at their best, when all pretence is gone. I'd like to believe it is this access to raw, unadorned human experience, life's thresholds and endings, that gives doctors a peculiar vantage point. They witness what most of us only guess at. And when some of them choose to write, their words often possess the kind of authority that only suffering—and the attempt to ease it—can confer. In our times, a bunch of authors embody the archetype elegantly. I'll start with Siddhartha Mukherjee, whose Pulitzer-winning The Emperor of All Maladies made the grim history of cancer into something luminous, almost operatic. Mukherjee, a cell biologist, moves effortlessly from the granular language of genes to the grand arcs of history and myth. His more recent book, The Gene: An Intimate History, is as much about heredity as it is about inheritance, body, trauma, memory, and beyond. Atul Gawande takes a different tack. His writing, especially in Being Mortal, studies not just death, but the systems that fail us as we age. A surgeon with scalpel-sharp prose, Gawande's gift is for laying bare the limits of modern medicine. He focusses on the need to focus on our well-being rather than on our survival. Then there's Abraham Verghese, part physician, part novelist. His writing, be it the sprawling novel Cutting for Stone (2009) or the latest, The Covenant of Water, pulses with a love for language and for the strange, sustaining rituals of medicine. The Kodagu-based Kavery Nambisan is a surgeon whose books, The Hills of Angheri and The Story that Must Not Be Told, eschew romanticism. She writes of rural India, of ethical decay, of dignity in dying. Her writing is political in the best way: not polemical, but attentive to class, caste, and the compromises made by the poor and the principled. One of the most beautiful contributions to this genre is Vikram Paralkar's underrated work The Afflictions, a surreal, Borgesian catalogue of imaginary diseases that reads like a cross between a clinical manual and a dream journal. It reminds us of how thin the line is sometimes between medicine and myth. What is it that we're really reading when we read a doctor's prose? We are reading, perhaps, someone who has seen too much. Someone whose vocabulary must stretch to accommodate grief, whose syntax has absorbed the rhythms of suffering. A line of poetry that comes to mind is from Emily Dickinson—not a doctor, but certainly acquainted with illness: 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –' I think this is what many physician-writers bring to the table: a language for that 'formal feeling', a lexicon for loss that neither wallows nor looks away. It was only recently—when an intern at Frontline mentioned it to me—that I heard the term 'medical humanities'. For those who haven't heard of it either, medical humanities is what happens when you admit that the body is more than a machine, and healing more than a technical fix. It's a restless, interdisciplinary field that brings together philosophy, literature, ethics, history, art, religion—even theatre and film—with medicine, not to romanticise illness, but to understand it in its full, human context. It asks what pain means, not just how to measure it. 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Diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at the cusp of his career as a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi began writing about his illness with eerie clarity and grace. I once reviewed the book—and carried the weight of it for weeks. 'Even if I'm dying,' he wrote, 'until I actually die, I am still living.' It is one of life's odd and lovely ironies that so many of our most healing stories come not from novelists or poets, but from doctors. As the dictionary-building Dr Minor proved, even in madness and despair, a doctor can give language new life. Which is precisely why Frontline is thrilled to introduce a new column by the brilliant doctor-duo 'Kalpish Ratna' (Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed), titled 'Hello, Fingertip' where the surgeons will be looking at how humans can reconnect with their 'sentient selves'. Read it here (it's free!) and let us know your thoughts. Also, write back with your favourite doctor-writers, in any language. Wishing you a healthy week ahead, Jinoy Jose P. Digital Editor, Frontline We hope you've been enjoying our newsletters featuring a selection of articles that we believe will be of interest to a cross-section of our readers. Tell us if you like what you read. And also, what you don't like! Mail us at frontline@
Hindustan Times
10-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
Donald Trump wearing a Foley catheter? POTUS' latest appearance sparks health concerns
President Donald Trump's recent White House appearance and at a UFC event in New Jersey sparked health concerns. Several social media users noted that they could see a bulge in his trouser leg, further fueling theories about the 78-year-old wearing a Foley catheter due to urinary incontinence or neurological issues. The Trump administration is yet to address these theories. Images of Trump at the Rose Garden, where Trump inspected a construction project, and the UFC event, where he posed with champion Kayla Harrison, show a tube-like outline down his left pant leg. Read More: Trump says he would 'certainly invoke' Insurrection Act if needed amid Los Angeles protests 'Trump is absolutely wearing a Foley catheter… It's a tube inserted into the bladder to drain urine into a bag strapped to the leg,' one person said on X, platform formerly known as Twitter. They further attached a photo of the president. Another user, @Suzierizzo1, added, 'It definitely looks like Trump is wearing a Catheter most likely a Foley!' Some X users dismissed the claims, attributing the bulge to wrinkled pants. X users commented, 'Wrinkles in his pants? Drrrr,' and 'Wrinkles in the suite? Who tf cares?' No medical evidence or official statement supports the catheter theory. Read More: Trump stumbles on Air Force One steps, internet says 'Joe Biden vibes' | Video In April, White House physician Captain Sean Barbabella declared Trump, 78, in 'excellent health' after a five-hour physical at Walter Reed, citing 'robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function.' The report noted a 20-pound weight loss, diverticulosis, a benign polyp, and a scar from a July 2024 assassination attempt, but no mention of catheters or incontinence. Health concerns have dogged Trump, with 2022 photos suggesting a catheter bag and 2024 claims of incontinence. His physician's 2025 report omitted such issues, and Trump's active lifestyle, including golf, was cited as evidence of fitness. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Trump visited Fort Bragg, home to some 50,000 active-duty soldiers, for long-scheduled commemorations of the US Army's 250th anniversary following his move to deploy 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
NDTV
06-06-2025
- NDTV
US Army Aims To Produce 3D-Printed Skin To Help Treat Soldiers
The US Army is exploring the technology of bioprinting, which involves 3D printing human tissues using living cells, proteins and nutrients as raw materials, to treat the wounds of soldiers and save their lives, the official site of the US Department of Defence said. The US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC) has collaborated with the University of Hawaii System on two initiatives in order to leverage biomaterials and advanced manufacturing. The project is under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) and two initial joint work statements (JWS), according to the US Army. From organ-on-a-chip scientific tools to manufacturing and repair capabilities, the two organisations would work on various life-saving initiatives to support the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), which is headquartered in Hawaii. Dr Jason Barnhill, who is an associate research professor at the John A Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM), at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will work with Priscilla Lee, a DEVCOM CBC bioengineering researcher, to develop organ models for assessing various compounds under the first JWS. As quoted in the official report, Sam Shomaker, dean of the University of Hawaii at Manoa JABSOM, said, "We are incredibly proud that Dr. Barnhill and Priscilla Lee are representing the University of Hawaii at Manoa and DEVCOM CBC with these efforts that have the potential to save the lives of our frontline Soldiers and civilians across the world." "By helping to introduce innovative biofabrication technology to even more remote areas, JABSOM is assisting in the mission across the Pacific and globally," Shomaker added. The official report mentions that Lee's focus is on bioprinting cell culture models with an aim to understand immune responses and develop next-generation biomaterials for various uses. The project aims to enhance the current in vitro organ models with the help of bioprinting. The researchers believe that the bioprinting technology would help soldiers in treatments for burns, exposure to poisonous gases, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and more such threats. What is bioprinting? As mentioned earlier, bioprinting is the process of creating 3D, cellular structures using bio-inks to make functional, biological replicas of body parts. If successful, the process could be a massive milestone in the area of organ transplantation. For example, if a person needs a new heart, imagine scientists taking cells from that person to create an entire new organ.
