Medical and biomedical applications of 3D and 4D printed polymer nanocomposites

In the last years, 3D printing has found applications also in the field of biomedicine thanks to its intrinsic versatile nature. Indeed, since additive manufacturing offers the possibility to manipulate and transform a considerable variety of materials under many different conditions, both not-colonized and cells-populated structures can be grown. In detail, nanoparticles enriched polymeric matrixes have attracted the attention of biologists interested in additively building structures able to correctly mimic the extracellular environment. This means not only to 3D print scaffolds for cells maintenance and survival, but also to give birth to 4D real biological microenvironments in which cells can be actively or passively stimulated and parts of human tissues regenerated by inducing natural cellular behavior.