An Overview of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Strategies for 3D-Printed Bioengineered Vascular Stents: Toward...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science
• Pharmaceutical Sciences

Background:

• Additive manufacturing (AM) offers advanced capabilities for fabricating complex medical devices.
• Drug-eluting devices, particularly vascular stents, benefit from precise drug delivery control.
• Traditional manufacturing methods face limitations in design complexity and customization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review additive manufacturing technologies for pharmaceutical device fabrication.
• To analyze the application of 3D printing in creating drug-eluting vascular stents.
• To explore material advancements and challenges in AM for medical devices.

Main Methods:

• Review of six primary additive manufacturing techniques, including vat photopolymerization and direct energy deposition.
• Analysis of novel 4D/5D/6D printing technologies for stimuli-responsive drug release.
• Examination of material properties (metals, polymers, nanocomposites) and drug-loading capacities.

Main Results:

• AM provides superior design flexibility, reducing design iteration time by 85-95% and eliminating tooling costs.
• Diverse materials enable tailored drug loading (100-500 μg/cm²) and release kinetics.
• 4D/5D/6D printing allows programmable drug release and adaptive device functionality.

Conclusions:

• 3D printing enables the integration of multiple pharmaceutical functions into single devices.
• It facilitates controlled spatiotemporal drug delivery and eliminates secondary drug coating steps.
• Key priorities include developing biocompatible materials, accelerated testing, and scalable manufacturing for next-generation therapeutic devices.