Regenerative Strategies in Orthopedics: Engineering Scaffolds

Orthopedic injuries are among the common health issues, and regenerative strategies are needed in the clinics [1,2]. In the last few decades, there have been critical advances in the engineering of scaffolds, and tissue engineering. Together will cells, scaffolds play a critical role in the regeneration of tissues. Therefore, scaffolds have been developed and studied extensively for the treatment of orthopedic injuries [3]. The 3D-printing methods have been reforming the tissue engineering scaffolds with a shift from the conventionally produced biomaterial only scaffolds to bioinks to produce living scaffolds as well as the production of patient-specific scaffolds [4] together with medical imaging modalities. Modulation of various characteristics within a scaffold would affect the cell function and the performance of the implant. The current unsolved issues are the biomechanical and compositional mismatch between the neotissue and the native tissue. It should be also noted that the clinical use of scaffolds depends on the injury, and is based on indications and contra-indications. For future advances, the current challenges should be addressed, and the engineering of scaffolds has of critical role to have patient- and lesion-specific scaffolds. Acknowledgments: IFC thanks the TERM RES-Hub, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Infrastructure project, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and the funding through the project 2IQBIONEURO (ref. 0624_2IQBIONEURO_6_E). The FCT distinction attributed to IFC under the Estímulo ao Emprego Científico program (2021.01969.CEECIND) is also greatly acknowledged. Keywords: 3D-(bio)printing, Biomaterials, Patient-specific scaffolds, Regeneration