Osteoconductivity of bone substitutes with filament-based microarchitectures: Influence of directionality, filament dimension, and distance

63Additive manufacturing can be applied to produce personalized bone substitutes. At present, the major three-dimensional (3D) printing methodology relies on filament extrusion. In bioprinting, the extruded filament consists mainly of hydrogels, in which growth factors and cells are embedded. In this study, we used a lithography-based 3D printing methodology to mimic filament-based microarchitectures by varying the filament dimension and the distance between the filaments. In the first set of scaffolds, all filaments were aligned toward bone ingrowth direction. In a second set of scaffolds, which were derived from the identical microarchitecture but tilted by 90°, only 50% of the filaments were in line with the bone ingrowth direction. Testing of all tricalcium phosphate-based constructs for osteoconduction and bone regeneration was performed in a rabbit calvarial defect model. The results revealed that if all filaments are in line with the direction of bone ingrowth, filament size and distance (0.40–1.25 mm) had no significant influence on defect bridging. However, with 50% of filaments aligned, osteoconductivity declined significantly with an increase in filament dimension and distance. Therefore, for filament-based 3D- or bio-printed bone substitutes, the distance between the filaments should be 0.40 to 0.50 mm irrespective of the direction of bone ingrowth or up to 0.83 mm if perfectly aligned to it.