Besides illnesses, trauma and tumors can lead to a critical size bone defect (Porter et al., 2009).
Critical size bone defects caused by diseases such as osteogenesis imperfecta, osteoarthritis, osteomyelitis, osteoporosis, or conditions related to infection or induced by wear, still remain key challenges to be addressed in clinical practice (Porter et al., 2009 Nauth et al., 2018). However, if a defect reaches a critical size (~≥2.5 cm (Schemitsch, 2017 Nauth et al., 2018), depending on the surgical case), the endogenous regenerative capacity of bone tissue is insufficient for self-repair (Mothersill et al., 1991). Bone healing is a well-orchestrated process and for most minor fractures a mechanical fixation of the damaged bone region is sufficient for successful convalescence. The healing of bone fractures is a remarkable repairing process, resulting in the complete reconstruction of the tissue achieving its original form and functionality (Kumar and Narayan, 2014). Our findings confirm that FDM is a convenient additive manufacturing technology to develop PLA-BG composite scaffolds suitable for bone tissue engineering.īone is known for its self-healing abilities (Bose et al., 2013). Gene expression analyses indicated the beneficial impact of BG inclusions in FDM scaffolds regarding osteoinduction, as BG inclusions lead to increased osteogenic differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells in comparison to pristine PLA. We demonstrated the printability of PLA-BG filaments as well as the bioactivity and cytocompatibility of PLA-BG scaffolds using pre-osteoblast MC3T3E1 cells. We present here polylactic acid (PLA)-bioactive glass (BG) composite scaffolds manufactured by fused deposition modeling (FDM), involving the fabrication of PLA-BG composite filaments which are used to 3D print controlled open-porous and osteoinductive scaffolds. Not requiring bone donation, three-dimensionally (3D) printed implants and biomaterial-based tissue engineering (TE) strategies promise to be the next generation therapies for bone regeneration. However, such treatments require to harvest bone from patient donor sites, with often limited tissue availability or risk of donor site morbidity. Critical size bone defects are regularly treated by auto- and allograft transplantation.