Rapid prototyping technology and its application in bone tissue engineering

Abstract

Bone defects arising from a variety of reasons cannot be treated effectively without bone tissue reconstruction. Autografts and allografts have been used in clinical application for some time, but they have disadvantages. With the inherent drawback in the precision and reproducibility of conventional scaffold fabrication techniques, the results of bone surgery may not be ideal. This is despite the introduction of bone tissue engineering which provides a powerful approach for bone repair. Rapid prototyping technologies have emerged as an alternative and have been widely used in bone tissue engineering, enhancing bone tissue regeneration in terms of mechanical strength, pore geometry, and bioactive factors, and overcoming some of the disadvantages of conventional technologies. This review focuses on the basic principles and characteristics of various fabrication technologies, such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, and fused deposition modeling, and reviews the application of rapid prototyping techniques to scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. In the near future, the use of scaffolds for bone tissue engineering prepared by rapid prototyping technology might be an effective therapeutic strategy for bone defects.

Keywords: Rapid prototyping; Bone tissue engineering; Scaffolds.

Fig. 1

Schematic diagram of SLA (Lee et al., 2010)

Fig. 2

Schematic diagram of two types of SLA Left: bottom-up approrch. Right: top-down approach. Reprinted from Melchels et al. (2010), Copyright 2010, with permission from Elsevier

Fig. 3

SEM image of high-precision 3D PPF-PLGA scaffold (a–c) BMP-2-loaded 3D scaffold; (d) Microspheres embedded in the scaffold. Reprinted from Lee et al. (2011), Copyright 2011, with permission from Elsevier

Fig. 4

Schematic diagram of SLS Reprinted from Williams et al. (2005), Copyright 2005, with permission from Elsevier

Fig. 5

X-ray examination of harvested specimens at different time points Top: PCL-TCP scaffold. Bottom: Ti cages. Reprinted from Li et al. (2014), Copyright 2014, with permission from Elsevier

Fig. 6

Schematic diagrams of some nozzle-based systems (a) FDM; (b) 3D fiber deposition; (c) PEM; (d) PED; (e) LDM; (f) 3D bioplotting. The figure is referenced from Narayan (2014)

Fig. 7

Schematic diagram of 3DP (Bose et al., 2013)