BIOCERAMIC SCAFFOLD—BONE TISSUE ENGINEERING - Intelligent Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine - page 92

ness and compressive strength. The possible suggested alterna-
tive is a polymer-cermaic composite and nanocermaic scaffolds
that should also have good resorbable properties. 42 , 43 Nanostruc-
tured materials or surface coatings will continue to improve the
biocompatibility of a growing range of devices and scaffolds for
tissue-engineered products, especially; the work on nanofibril-
lar networks produced by self-assembly is expected to converge
with advances made in cell biology to provide functional scaf-
folds for tissue engineering applications in the following years
to come. Therapeutic approaches for tissue-engineered repair of
bone defects have attempted to mimic the natural process of bone
repair by delivering a source of cells capable of differentiating
into osteoblasts, inductive growth and differentiation factors, or
bioresorbable scaffolding matrices to support cellular attachment,
migration, and proliferation. However, an ideal engineered mate-
rial from the point of view of a suitable 3D matrix, its technol-
ogy for industrial production, a suitable cell source and method
of seeding onto that matrix, and the ideal conditions for its pro-
liferation with a precise combination of a suitable growth factor
is yet to be standardized. A su cient databank has been gener-
ated, and we could expect a positive response to these points in
the coming few years. Nanostructured bioceramics seems to be an
ideal matrix for bone tissue engineering since it satisfies all the
requirements of a tissue-engineered matrix and can be developed
into a successful tissue-engineered bone during this “bone and joint
decade.”
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Prof. K. Mohandas, director, and Dr. G. S.
Bhuvaneshwar, head, Biomedical Technology (BMT) wing of
Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology
(SCTIMST), for providing facilities for the completion of this chap-
ter. This work has been partially funded by the Department of Sci-
ence & Technology, New Delhi, under the Drugs and Pharmaceutical
Research Programme, FADDS project #8013.