3D printing of bone tissue engineering scaffolds with osteoconductivity and osterinductivity

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: By using 3D printing techniques such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) and selective laser sintering, tissue engineering scaffolds with desirable properties can be produced[1],[2]. Conventional FDM requires heating a polymer wire to form molten “ink”, which damages biomolecules if they are incorporated in the “ink” during scaffold fabrication. Therefore, developing new techniques based on 3D printing for delivering biomolecules is very important. For bone tissue engineering, delivering both bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) and calcium phosphate (Ca-P) could provide scaffolds with osteoinductivity and osteoconductivity[3]. In this study, a modified commercial desktop 3D printer was used to fabricate rhBMP-2 and Ca-P nanoparticle incorporated poly(L,lactic acid) (PLLA) scaffolds ...