Tissue Engineering Scaffolds for Bone Repair: Application to Dental Repair

Abstract

Medical implants for bone repair are starting to benefit from advanced design and (micro-)manufacturing technologies that promote a precise control of final geometries and allow for the incorporation of design-controlled and in some cases personalized features for enhanced interaction at a cellular level. Recent advances in additive manufacturing technologies and available materials support solid free-form design and fabrication approaches, hence helping with device personalization and enabling a real 3D control of device geometry. Furthermore, the vast knowledge generated during last decades in the field of tissue engineering can be used as a source for redesigning all types of implants, pursuing improved biomechanical and biomimetic solutions, especially in the area of bone repair. Hybridizations between conventional compact bone implants and trabecular tissue engineering scaffolds can help to adjust the mechanical performance of bone repair solutions to that of real bone, thus promoting long-term stability and preventing bone resorption thanks to a more adequate stress distribution in service. The increased surface to volume ratio of such lattice or trabecular implants, based on the tissue engineering scaffold concept, helps with cellular attachment to the implant, improves cell motility due to the presence of irregularities that help them to “crawl”, enhances osseointegration in the case of implants aimed at bone repair and promotes drug incorporation for disease prevention. The potential of dental scaffolds for the in vitro development of artificial teeth is also remarkable. The general aspects and main design and manufacturing strategies linked to these advanced scaffold-based implants for bone repair have been introduced in previous chapter. Here we focus on the area of dental implants, detailing novel concepts, describing the development process of a scaffold library for dental applications, modeling and discussing dental implant interactions with bone and also analyzing the more remarkable technologies capable of providing adequate results for the manufacture of high-precision dental solutions, when compared with other state-of-the-art manufacturing approaches.