Image: Ángela García de la Camacha Díaz

The arrival of spring always brings joy, colour, and life. April reminds us that after the cold winter, a new chapter begins… One filled with fruits ready to be harvested. And that is exactly what we have seen in the lab.

In this Image of the Month, we can observe the “fruits” of the work carried out over these winter months. During this time, we have been developing a new material, produced for the first time using 3D printing. It is a composite material made of a polymer matrix (PLA) reinforced with a continuous metallic wire (Mg). By combining PLA and Mg, we can tune the mechanical properties and degradation behaviour of the PLA/Mg composite. This makes the material especially promising for the design of scaffolds for bone tissue regeneration, within the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

However, before any material can truly be called “bio”, it must pass strict biocompatibility and cytocompatibility tests. Over these long winter months, we have focused on evaluating the cytocompatibility of this newly developed 3D-printed material. In one of these studies, we explored the interaction between cells and the material by directly seeding MC3T3 preosteoblast cells onto the PLA/Mg surface for 24 hours.