Switching On Bone

Bone is a powerful protective shield of our vital viscera so, if damaged such as from trauma or infection, any repair needed should be rapid. Here, aiming to expedite bone breach healing, researchers have incorporated the power of electrical stimulation – which ups calcium levels and activity of genes involved in bone making – in a biodegradable 3D printed scaffold device. Pictured are regenerated bone tissues with various scaffolds 12 weeks after implantation in a hole in a rat's skull and reacted with two different path lab standard chemical mixes called H&E (pinky ones) and Masson's trichrome (bluey ones) to reveal the cell composition and thereby the success of the implant

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Image from work by Xibo Wang, Ningxin Zhu, Haitao Chen and Bingbing Yu, and colleagues
• School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University; National Engineering Laboratory for Digital and Material Technology of Stomatology, Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology, Beijing, P. R. China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
• Published in Science Advances, August 2026