Current researches on design and manufacture of biopolymer-based osteochondral biomimetic scaffolds

Currently, osteochondral (OC) tissue engineering has become a potential treatment strategy in repairing chondral lesions and early osteoarthritis due to the limited self-healing ability of cartilage. However, it is still challenging to ensure the integrity, physiological function and regeneration ability of stratified OC scaffolds in clinical application. Biomimetic OC scaffolds are attractive to overcome the above problems because of their similar biological and mechanical properties with native OC tissue. As a consequence, the researches on biomimetic design to achieve the tissue function of each layer, and additive manufacture (AM) to accomplish composition switch and ultrastructure of personalized OC scaffolds have made a remarkable progress. In this review, the design methods of biomaterial and structure as well as computer-aided design, and performance prediction of biopolymer-based OC scaffolds are presented; then, the characteristics and limitations of AM technologies and the integrated manufacture schemes in OC tissue engineering are summarized; finally, the novel biomaterials and techniques and the inevitable trends of multifunctional bio-manufacturing system are discussed for further optimizing production of tissue engineering OC scaffolds.