Published Paper Details:

Bone is a metabolically active organ. Excessive stress or traumatic accidents may cause fractures, and diseases like Osteoporosis and osteomalacia lead to the weakening of bones respectively which further causes defects in them. Although bone has a high capacity for healing, large bone defects cannot be self-healed. They need various surgical interventions such as joint arthroplasty or bone grafting. Such surgical procedures can heal the defect but may cause inflammation at the surgical site, infection, donor-site morbidity, and various other limitations. To avoid these post-surgical problems a three-dimensional bioprinting (3D) of bone tissue is introduced. In this technique, a bone scaffold of precise size and shape is engineered with the help of bioinks comprising suitable biomaterials, cells, and growth factors. This bone scaffold is then implanted in the patient's body through surgical procedures. Bone scaffolds, bio-inks, and growth factors are the important elements of this technique. This technique enables us to construct personalized scaffolds according to patients' needs. High-accuracy simultaneous printing of cells with scaffolds is one of the advantages of 3D printing. In this review, bone defects have been discussed followed by an introduction to 3D bioprinting and its type. Later the following review emphasizes the process of bone tissue bioprinting and the properties of an ideal bone scaffold. Bioinks and the composition used for the process and various growth factors involved in it are mentioned. And at last, the current challenges of 3D bioprinting in the treatment of bone defects in humans were also acknowledged.