Advanced Design Methods towards the Combination of Additively Manufactured Scaffolds and Drug Delivery in Pharmaceutics

Regenerative engineering represents a field involving the design of biodegradable three-dimensional (3D) structures (i.e., scaffolds) with cells and tissue-inducing factors. Mechanical engineering, materials science, biology, biotechnology, and translational medicine are generally integrated to design 3D constructs for tissue engineering.

3D scaffolds may act as carriers for several kinds of drugs and genes, and the release profile may be finely tuned according to the composition, porosity, and geometrical features of the designed structures.

Over the past few years, the combination of growth factors and 3D scaffolds has been frequently proposed to develop advanced systems, which are able to function as biodegradable supports for tissue growth, also allowing the exploration of biological signals to modulate tissue regeneration.

Specific drugs, growth factors, and biomolecules can be incorporated into 3D scaffolds using several strategies.

In this scenario, additive manufacturing allows the development of 3D scaffolds with an interconnected pore network, well-defined geometries and pore shape and size, as well as with tailored mechanical and mass transport properties. The creative design of scaffolds involves novel and creative engineering techniques for systematically generating all possible design configurations, in order to meet design requirements and constraints.

Accordingly, it is through the combination of additively manufactured scaffolds and drug delivery that the current Special Issue is aimed at presenting criteria and methods for the design of advanced systems in pharmaceutics.

This approach would offer new possibilities for the design of biomimetic systems with specific hierarchical architectures and tunable release kinetics.

For this reason, in the present Special Issue, we invite authors to submit papers with the aim of providing a complete view of the current progresses.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Design for additive manufacturing;
• Scaffold design;
• Design methods;
• Design for drug delivery;
• Release profile;
• Conceptual and creative design;
• Design of experiments;
• Lattice structures;
• Biomimetics;
• Topology optimization;
• Additive manufacturing;
• Computer-aided design;
• Finite element analysis.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Gloria
Prof. Dr. Massimo Martorelli
Guest Editors

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