An undisclosed donation from two Uppsala University alumni will help Professor Cecilia Persson’s research group move 3D printed resorbable metal implants from the laboratory toward clinical use. The funding is aimed at the time-critical steps between basic research and a potential application, including early-stage ideas and a first patent application.
Persson, professor of materials science specializing in biomaterials, leads a group at Uppsala’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The group develops materials both for and through additive manufacturing, often working with the healthcare system and industry. Its current priority is a set of new metals developed using additive manufacturing that could be used in implants that dissolve inside the body.
“This donation will make a big difference. It will enable time-critical steps to be taken in the process of taking the results from basic research forward towards a potential application,” says Cecilia Persson.
Printed metals designed to disappear
The group is working on resorbable implants. These implants degrade over time as the patient’s own tissue grows in to replace them. Conventional permanent implants can stay in the body indefinitely or need a second operation to remove them. A resorbable implant is designed to do its structural job and then gradually give way to regenerating bone.
Persson describes the clinical benefits: “These implants make additional surgeries superfluous, can reduce the risk of infection associated with implants, and can allow bone regeneration in paediatric medicine.”
The pediatric use is especially important. A child’s skeleton is still growing, so a permanent metal implant can become a problem over time. Additive manufacturing lets researchers control an implant’s geometry and internal structure in ways that are hard to achieve with conventional fabrication. For degradable metals, that control could affect how an implant carries load and how it breaks down.
The research sits within a wider effort in Persson’s group. It brings together researchers from several disciplines to tackle clinical problems through biomaterials development and implant design. The need is growing, as age, injury and disease all increase demand for treatments that can replace bone and other tissue.
Funding aimed at patents and commercialization
The donation comes with few restrictions. Persson may use it for whatever research purposes she considers most urgent. The donors have also said it can support promising ideas at an early stage and pay for an initial patent application. That kind of spending often falls outside what conventional research grants cover.
The donors were clear that commercialization is part of what they hope to see. “It’s our hope that the donation will lead to the development of something that can be commercialised and for that you need patents,” they say.
Persson’s entrepreneurial record was one of the reasons they chose her group. She has been involved in founding companies before. The donors said this shows she understands why new products need to reach the market through a company, which in turn benefits society more broadly.
The donors also have a professional connection to the field. Both have backgrounds as researchers in chemistry, materials engineering and medical technology. They noted that Persson’s research also has links to a company they previously owned. Outside this gift, they have supported multiple sclerosis research and are active in the Swedish Burn Care Foundation, a non-profit working to improve treatment of burns and severe wounds in low-income countries.
A campaign ahead of Uppsala’s 550th anniversary
The gift was prompted by “Boundless knowledge,” the Vice-Chancellor’s fundraising campaign ahead of Uppsala University’s 550th anniversary in 2027. The donors learned about Persson’s work through Johan Tysk, Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor on External Relations. Tysk had briefed them on the university’s successes in medical technology research, and given their own technical backgrounds, they decided to back Persson’s group.
University leadership sees private donations as filling a specific gap in research funding. Charlotte Platzer Björkman, professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Vice-rector of the Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, says such gifts support “purposes that do not always fall within the scope of regular research grants.”
She adds that the value goes beyond money: “But they also have a value in the form of the personal engagement and interest shown by the donor. I think that means a lot to our researchers.”
Neither the university nor the donors have disclosed the size of the donation or the identities of the donors. Specific milestones, such as timelines for patent filings, preclinical testing or spin-out plans, have not been announced. Still, the funding focuses on the translational stage, where many academic biomaterials projects stall. That suggests Uppsala’s resorbable printed metals could move toward protected intellectual property and industrial partnership in the coming years.
Closing the gap between printed prototypes and clinical products
Persson’s group uses additive manufacturing to develop new metals for resorbable implants, a field where many 3D printed biomaterials stop at the proof-of-concept stage. The donation targets that stage directly. It can fund early-stage ideas and a first patent application, so the group can protect its printed resorbable metals before taking them further.
At RWTH Aachen University, the Chair Digital Additive Production (DAP), working with the reACT alliance, is developing 3D printed bioresorbable implants designed around each patient. Its automated design configurator generates implant models from medical imaging data, factoring in defect shape, patient age and bone density, for production by powder bed laser beam fusion. The resulting lattice structures give temporary support while the implant degrades. The same DAP team earlier developed a zinc-magnesium alloy for bioresorbable bone implants under the BioStruct project, using laser powder bed fusion to print lattices matched to specific bone defects.
Other groups are working on how to print these metals in the first place. ETH Zurich researchers used a 3D printed salt template to produce magnesium scaffolds with ordered pores, getting around the metal’s highly oxidative nature, which makes it difficult to print conventionally. At Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, researchers tested selective laser melting and binder jetting to turn zinc and zinc oxide powders into patient-specific scaffolds for bone regeneration.
Printing resorbable metals is becoming technically feasible across Europe and Asia. Uppsala is betting that early patent protection will turn its printed alloys into products rather than papers.
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Featured image shows Cecilia Persson’s research group is developing new knowledge in additive manufacturing. Photo via Mikael Wallerstedt, Uppsala University
