MANUFACTURING:

For Newport Beach-based Desktop Health, a newly formed 3D printing company created after its publicly traded parent company’s $300 million acquisition of Michigan-based EnvisionTec early this year, the focus on digital technologies in dentistry makes it the perfect health sector to target.

The company last month launched its first product, Flexcera Smile, which are prosthetic dentures made from resin and 3D fabrication.

It’s a product that targets “a need that has not been met in the dental space before,” and was created with 60 dental leaders informing the whole experience, Chief Executive Michael Mazen Jafar told the Business Journal.

Jafar, who spent more than two decades with Allergan, before serving as chief marketing and commercial officer for local aesthetics competitor Evolus, said the dental sector is the best place to start as a health-focused 3D printing company because it is “ahead of traditional healthcare in terms of digitization.”

Yet, there’s plenty of room to grow. Jafar estimated that only about 25% of the digital dentistry sector has been penetrated, leaving many opportunities on the table.

Desktop Health set up its headquarters in Newport Beach earlier this year. It plans to scale to about 40 employees by year’s end. Its Burlington, Mass.-based parent company, Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM), has about 250 employees touching its healthcare-focused divisions. The $3.3 billion-valued parent company is contributing about $100 million in research and development and additional acquisition funds that Desktop Health could deploy, Jafar said.

“We’re well capitalized to explore our ideas, and within two years we’ll have a nice portfolio of technologies. We’re looking to acquire companies in material science [or with] ingenuity around scanning or translating technologies,” he said.