Enabling technologies towards personalization of scaffolds for large bone defect regeneration

Additive manufacturing (AM) can deliver personalized scaffolds to support large volume defect tissue regeneration - a major clinical challenge in many medical disciplines. The freedom in scaffold design and composition (biomaterials and biologics) offered by AM yields a plethora of possibilities but is confronted with a heterogenous biological regeneration potential across individuals. A key challenge is to make the right choice for individualized scaffolds that match biology, anatomy, and mechanics of patients. This review provides an overview of state-of-the-art technologies, that is, in silico modelling for scaffold design, omics and bioinformatics to capture patient biology and information technology for data management, that, when combined in a synergistic way with AM, have great potential to make personalized tissue regeneration strategies available to all patients, empowering precision medicine.

Automated summary

Additive manufacturing can produce personalized scaffolds for large volume defect tissue regeneration, but faces challenges due to the heterogeneous biological regeneration potential across individuals. By combining technologies such as in silico modeling, omics, bioinformatics, and information technology, personalized tissue regeneration strategies can be developed using additive manufacturing, which has great potential in advancing precision medicine.