Three-dimensional Bioprinting for Bone and Cartilage Restoration in Orthopaedic Surgery

Abstract

Notable shortcomings exist in the currently available surgical options for reconstruction of bone and articular cartilage defects. Three-dimensional (3D) printing incorporating viable cells and extracellular matrix, or 3D bioprinting, is an additive manufacturing tissue engineering technique that can be used for layer-by-layer fabrication of highly complex tissues such as bone and cartilage. Because of the scalability of 3D bioprinting, this technology has the ability to fabricate tissues in clinically relevant volumes and addresses the defects of varying sizes and geometries. To date, most of our in vitro and in vivo success with cartilage and bone tissue bioprinting has been with extrusion-based bioprinting using alginate carriers and scaffold free bioinks. Fabrication of composite tissues has been achieved, including bone which includes vascularity, a necessary requisite to tissue viability. As this technology evolves, and we are able to integrate high-quality radiographic imaging, computer-assisted design, computer-assisted manufacturing, with real-time 3D bioprinting and ultimately in situ surgical printing, this additive manufacturing technique can be used to reconstruct both bone and articular cartilage and has the potential to succeed where our currently available clinical technologies and tissue manufacturing strategies fail.

Plant-Derived Biomaterials: A Review of 3D Bioprinting and Biomedical Applications

“…Using extrusion-based bioprinting with an alginate scaffold, vascularized bone tissue has been synthesized with high tissue viability (Dhawan et al, 2018). Whole bone organ engineering has been studied using an alginate based bioink with Arg-Gly-Asp adhesion peptides reinforced with polycaprolactone fibers.…”

Biofabrication of SDF-1 Functionalized 3D-Printed Cell-Free Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Regeneration

“…The 3D-printing techniques evolved in the last 20 years, leading to new optional materials for bone restoration. Currently, 3D printing, or 3D bioprinting, incorporating cells, extracellular matrix or bioactive molecules allows the fabrication of scaffolds with high structural complexity including pores of various sizes [9]. This relative new technique has already been applied in many fields of medicine including bone or cartilage restoration in dentistry or orthopedic surgery.…”

Advances on Bone Substitutes through 3D Bioprinting

“…The potential applications of BTE in orthopedics are enormous since can solve both bone and cartilage problems [ 191 ]. A comprehensive review analyzing the application of BTE for orthopedic trauma according to the different anatomical sites, showed its usefulness to treat bone trauma in a patient-specific manner [ 192 ].…”