(609e) Additive manufacturing in treatment for bone disorders: Opportunities and challenges

Role of 3D printing (3DP) or additive manufacturing (AM) is becoming important in need of patient matched implants due to lower cost and shorter lead time to manufacture. Additively manufactured components need to be controlled and optimized carefully for their reproducibility, machine to machine part quality variations and process specific material properties. Establishing process property relationships for different AM techniques are vital towards successful implementation of these manufacturing practices in biomedical devices. Hard biomaterials, e.g., calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramics being compositionally similar to the inorganic part of bone, show significant promise towards bone implant applications, in both 3DP tissue engineering scaffolds and surface modified hip and knee implants. Dopant chemistry in CaP plays a vital role in controlling their resorption or degradation kinetics as scaffolds, mechanical strength, and biological properties of resorbable CaPs. In vivo studies show improved osteogenesis, angiogenesis and controlled drug delivery using natural medicinal compounds (NMCs) in these 3DP scaffolds and coatings. These systems show promise for their use in orthopedic and dental devices while eliminating the need for the autografts and the second site surgery for harvesting, as well as improving current hip / knee implant lifetime.