Hybrid polymer biomaterials for bone tissue regeneration

Abstract

Native tissues possess unparalleled physiochemical and biological functions, which can be attributed to their hybrid polymer composition and intrinsic bioactivity. However, there are also various concerns or limitations over the use of natural materials derived from animals or cadavers, including the potential immunogenicity, pathogen transmission, batch to batch consistence and mismatch in properties for various applications. Therefore, there is an increasing interest in developing degradable hybrid polymer biomaterials with controlled properties for highly efficient biomedical applications. There have been efforts to mimic the extracellular protein structure such as nanofibrous and composite scaffolds, to functionalize scaffold surface for improved cellular interaction, to incorporate controlled biomolecule release capacity to impart biological signaling, and to vary physical properties of scaffolds to regulate cellular behavior. In this review, we highlight the design and synthesis of degradable hybrid polymer biomaterials and focus on recent developments in osteoconductive, elastomeric, photoluminescent and electroactive hybrid polymers. The review further exemplifies their applications for bone tissue regeneration.

Keywords

hybrid polymer / bone regeneration / tissue engineering / biomaterials

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by US DOD (No. W81XWH-12-2-0008), the National Institutes of Health (Nos. NIDCR DE022327 and T32 HD007505), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51502237, 21304073, and 51673155), and Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Bo Lei, Baolin Guo, Kunal J. Rambhia, and Peter X. Ma declare that they have no financial conflicts of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by a relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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