Tissue regeneration, ceramic-polymer nanocomposites

Ceramic-polymer nanocomposites for bone-tissue regeneration... 

This chapter reviews biomedical grade ceramic-polymer nanocomposites, focussing on their impact and recent trends in the field of bone grafting and bone-tissue regeneration. 

Biomaterials must be properly selected because their physical, mechanical and biological properties will determine, to a great extent, the properties of the tissue-engineering scaffold. In Section 15.4, the main characteristics of monolithic biomaterials, precisely ceramics and polymers, are depicted, whereas in Section 15.5 the potential of ceramic-polymer nanocomposites in bone-tissue regeneration is illustrated. 

Ceramic-polymer nanocomposites for tissue regeneration state of the art and possible applications... 

Nanocomposites in orthopedic tissue engineering mimic the complex nanoarchitecture of natural bone, muscle, cartilage, and tendon tissue, providing a novel and practical approach to tissue regeneration. All ceramic, polymer, and metallic matrix nanocomposites offer a wide range of properties with different chemical and mechanical features they also exhibit indispensable bioactivity. There is a great potential to improve current biomaterials and nanocomposite scaffolds for musculoskeletal tissue regeneration. However, the variety of different chemical elements and structures of nanocomposites make it difficult to predict unknown outcomes of exposure to musculoskeletal tissue. More research is clearly needed to fully understand favorable nanocomposite chemistries for musculoskeletal tissue. 

HA/silica gel was studied as a tissue engineering scaffold for the delivery of BMSCs and platelet-rich growth factor and results indicated that this nanoscaffold-assisted strategy was more effective for bone regeneration in vivo compared to the treatment without nanoscaffold [93]. There are a lot of studies on composite nanoscaffolds composed of ceramics and other materials (mostly polymers or biomolecules) and Chapter 4 will deliver a comprehensive review on these nanocomposites. 

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