Dear Colleagues

Degenerative lesions of articular cartilage resulting from joint disease like osteoarthritis, show high global incidence and deeply impact quality of life and health of patients. Lacking vascularization and innervation, cartilage has extremely limited self-regeneration capacity and existing treatments cannot effectively stop or reverse tissue deterioration, but merely relieve its symptoms until surgical intervention become mandatory. Thus, cartilage degeneration represents an important challenge in orthopedics, with an urgent need for improved therapeutic strategies. Recently, significant advances have been made in the application of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies for cartilage reconstruction, providing smart approaches for restoring joint function, with the advantages of rapid and accurate molding, production of tailorable scaffolds and therapy personalization.

This Special Issue collects original research papers and reviews dealing with cutting-edge technologies in 3D printing of cartilage constructs regarding materials, cells and signaling molecules, with a view on cartilage anatomy as the basis for scaffold conceptualization.