Drug Delivery Applications of Three-Dimensional Printed (3DP) Mesoporous Scaffolds

Abstract

Mesoporous materials are structures characterized by a well-ordered large pore system with uniform porous dimensions ranging between 2 and 50 nm. Typical samples are zeolite, carbon molecular sieves, porous metal oxides, organic and inorganic porous hybrid and pillared materials, silica clathrate and clathrate hydrates compounds. Improvement in biochemistry and materials science led to the design and implementation of different types of porous materials ranging from rigid to soft two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) skeletons. The present review focuses on the use of three-dimensional printed (3DP) mesoporous scaffolds suitable for a wide range of drug delivery applications, due to their intrinsic high surface area and high pore volume. In the first part, the importance of the porosity of materials employed for drug delivery application was discussed focusing on mesoporous materials. At the end of the introduction, hard and soft templating synthesis for the realization of ordered 2D/3D mesostructured porous materials were described. In the second part, 3DP fabrication techniques, including fused deposition modelling, material jetting as inkjet printing, electron beam melting, selective laser sintering, stereolithography and digital light processing, electrospinning, and two-photon polymerization were described. In the last section, through recent bibliographic research, a wide number of 3D printed mesoporous materials, for in vitro and in vivo drug delivery applications, most of which relate to bone cells and tissues, were presented and summarized in a table in which all the technical and bibliographical details were reported. This review highlights, to a very cross-sectional audience, how the interdisciplinarity of certain branches of knowledge, as those of materials science and nano-microfabrication are, represent a growing valuable aid in the advanced forum for the science and technology of pharmaceutics and biopharmaceutics.

Additive Manufacturing of Polymer Materials: Progress, Promise and Challenges

“…Besides traditional plastic components, this process has been adopted for a wide range of industries for innovative product development including soft magnets [ 62 ], drug delivery systems in the pharmaceutical field including personalized medicines [ 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ], in the forensic comparative analysis [ 67 ], in complete electrochemical sensing devices fabrication [ 68 ], in 3D printed microfluidics [ 69 ] and to design and manufacturing of complex porous scaffolds for biomedical, and tissue engineering applications [ 70 ]. Moreover, it also fits well in the framework of primary and secondary recycling.…”

Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems in orthopedics

“…Many studies in the literature reports the use of three-dimensional nanostructured scaffolds with drug delivery capabilities for bone tissue regeneration. [66][67][68][69][70] A mesoporous silicate nanoparticle incorporated-nanofibrous gelatin scaffold was designed for the dual delivery of bone morphogenic protein 2 and deferoxamine serving as a biomimetic osteogenic environment. [71] The results showed that the designed scaffold had the ability to control the dual drug delivery of bone morphogenic protein 2 and deferoxamine at distinct release rates, while maintaining their osteogenic and angiogenic abilities, respectively.…”

3D-Printed Degradable Anti-Tumor Scaffolds for Controllable Drug Delivery

“…The technical advantages of FDM include the selectivity of a variety of applicable materials, customized high precision, and low cost[ 18 ]. As a typical heat dissipation technology for scaffolding, FDM uses a thermoplastic polymer filament, which is heated to the melting point, and then extruded from the nozzle, and deposited layer by layer to create a scaffold[ 20 , 24 - 27 ]. The thermoplastic materials used in FDM technology include polylactic acid (PLA), poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC), and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)[ 28 - 35 ].…”