Flexible 3-D Printed Scaffolds Could Mend Broken Bones

When doctors repair broken bones or problematic joints, they often rely on ceramic or resin bone implants. But those have some downfalls: Because they’re rigid, they’re difficult for surgeons to customize to a patient’s body, and they are tricky to use in minimally invasive surgeries. The ideal would be a cheap material that would be bendable but would allow new bone to grow into its structure.

Ramille ShahIn a step toward that goal, Northwestern University researchers have developed a new ceramic-polymer blend that can be 3-D printed1 into various shapes and cut to fit. When implanted into experimental animals, replacement bones made of the material quickly integrated with the surrounding tissue, allowing real bone tissue to regenerate.

“It needed to have had the best properties of each of them, to maintain a balance between states of solid and liquid to be flexible or rigid, depending on what’s needed,” said senior author Ramille Shah, an assistant professor of material science and engineering at Northwestern University. “We combine the 3-D printing settings with the formulation in a way that brings out different properties in the materials.”...