Structural and Functional Adaptive Artificial Bone: Materials, Fabrications, and Properties

It is an urgent need that defect repair can develop from simple device fixation to living tissue reconstruction, from short life function replacement to permanent regeneration repair. At present, bone transplantation has become the second largest transplantation surgery after blood transfusion, and artificial bone transplantation generates great hope for the repair and treatment of bone defect. In order to repair bone defect, artificial bone must have good biological properties and sufficient mechanical properties, and it should also have the shape matching to bone defect site and the connected porous structure. For structures and properties requirements of artificial bone, in this review three major challenges faced by artificial bone transplantation are systemtically analyzed and current methods and strategies to address these issues are discussed: 1) the need for developing a type of bone scaffold material with both biological and mechanical properties, 2) the need for realizing the controllable fabrication of individual shape and multistage pore structure of bone scaffold, 3) the need for realizing the transformation from man-made structure to biological structure. Besides, it summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of these methods and discusses the potential future directions of structural and functional adaptive artificial bone for bone defect regeneration.