NOTTINGHAM, England, Feb. 8 (UPI) — Scientists in England created a 3D-printed bone scaffold that allows blood flow and cell growth to help the regeneration of natural bone tissue.
The scaffold may allow doctors to construct better materials for bone replacement that break down over time, unlike the metal implants often used by doctors. 
Doctors have already used 3D-printing to custom design replacement body parts for patients, such as a patient in Spain who received custom-printed ribs or 14-year-old from the Marshall Islands given a 3D-printed nose.
“Using this design strategy could help engineer bone scaffolds, whose porosity does not compromise their strength,” said Manolis Papastavrou, a doctoral candidate at Nottingham Trent University, in a press release. “In the long term, this research could contribute to replacing the use of metal in orthopaedic implants with materials that can be broken down by the body.”