Imaging techniques and 3D printing help fabricate customized scaffolds: Study

Bone tissue requires a range of complex mechanisms to allow the restoration of its structure and function. Bone healing is a signalling cascade process, involving cells secreting cytokines, growth factors, and pro-inflammatory factors in the defect site that will, subsequently, recruit surrounding stem cells to migrate, proliferate, and differentiate into bone-forming cells.

A study was conducted by a team of researchers to consolidate and report, based on the current scientific literature, the approaches for bone tissue regeneration using bioactive hydrogel-based scaffolds, cell-based therapies, and three-dimensional bioprinting to define the key challenges preventing their use in clinical applications.

The researchers found that:

Bioactive functional scaffolds could be applied to improve the bone healing processes where the organism is not able to fully regenerate the lost tissue.

• However, to be optimal, such scaffolds should act as osteoconductors – supporting bone-forming cells, providing nutrients, and sustaining the arrival of new blood vessels, and act as osteoinducers – slowly releasing signalling molecules that stimulate mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate and deposit mineralized bone matrix.
• Different compositions and shapes of scaffolds, cutting-edge technologies, application of signalling molecules to promote cell differentiation, and high-quality biomaterials are reaching favourable outcomes towards osteoblastic differentiation of stem cells in in vitro and in vivo researches for bone regeneration.

Thus, the researchers concluded that hydrogel-based biomaterials are being pointed as promising for bone tissue regeneration; however, despite all the research and high-impact scientific publications, there are still several challenges that prevent the use of hydrogel-based scaffolds for bone regeneration being feasible for their clinical application.

Reference:

A study titled, "Three-dimensional bioactive hydrogel-based scaffolds for bone regeneration in implant dentistry" by Mariane B.Sordi et. al published in the Materials Science and Engineering: C.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msec.2021.112055