The complexity of the biological functions of the human body makes it very demanding to find a suitable substitute material to repair damaged human body parts. The biomechanical and physicochemical properties of the ideal material must be similar to the affected body parts. Rare earth elements (REEs) are defined by remarkable biocatalytic and microbial regulatory properties that could fine‐tune the biomechanical and physiological functions of biomaterials to mitigate the mismatch between damaged body parts and synthetic implants. This review highlights the remarkable versatility of REEs in conferring multifunctionality to biomaterials, simultaneously addressing the critical challenges of infection, inflammation, mechanical mismatch and uncontrolled degradation. Incorporation of REEs into biomaterials promotes bone regeneration and prevents implant infections, permitting the production of multifunctional and high‐performance stimuli‐responsive biomaterials. The era of artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing has ushered in the manufacturing of biomimetic structures with improved bio‐functionality via the incorporation of REEs in the material matrices of the prime biomaterials. The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning is critical to navigating the vast compositional landscape of REE‐doped biomaterials, effectively eliminating the ‘trial‐and‐error’ in vivo and in vitro investigations of novel biomaterials, which would enhance the rapid development of multifunctional biomaterials and dramatically accelerating the discovery and design of patient‐specific implants.
Ngowi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.