3D Bioprinting Bone – One Defect At A Time (3DHeals blog)
This blog was inspired by my own clinical experience with head and neck cancer patients who received extensive facial bone resection and subsequent reconstruction. These patients often have to suffer both the wrath of cancer as well as the disfiguring but lifesaving surgery. Even, when the surgeons are world-class experts, their options to help these patients with restoration are limited. The autologous bone graft is simply not enough.[3] What many people perhaps don’t know is that bone harvesting is not only limited by donor sites and but also adding additional risk to surgeries.
Therefore, it is very exciting to see a myriad of research and commercial actives focusing on bone tissue engineering, especially ones focusing on 3D bioprinting bone (and cartilage). In fact, if we can truly design and manufacture implantable living bone tissue at ease, there is a huge economy behind the “space-filling” industry, from dentistry, reconstructive surgery, to orthopedics. [1-5]
That said, just because a 3D printed structure looks like bone, it may be far from the kind of bone we have in our bodies. Thus, this blog intends to address t...
