Bone Tissue Engineering Case Study

The worldwide incidence of bone disorders and conditions has been increasing. According to Ghosh et al, Sorokhod et al & Erbe et al, most of the inorganic material found in our bone tissue are created by the calcium phosphate that is part of the hydroxyapatite (as cited in Sheikh, 2015). Bone, as a living tissue has the ability to heal by itself but if the injury exceeds the limit of the bone to recover itself, it will not heal naturally (Rajendran, 2015). Current treatments have loopholes making it less effective and risky for humans.
One of the most promising treatments, made possible by technological advancement, that can help solve bone problems is Bone Tissue Engineering (BTE). Tissue engineering targets to repair damaged tissues rather
A former approach used is the infusion method but this results to the low grafting rate of the cells transplanted causing low therapeutic efficacy of the cell transplantation. To overcome these problems, biomaterials play an important role in the creation of an environment suitable to the survival and functional achievement of the cell. The scaffold to be used is prepared from biomaterials. Biomaterials need to assist the approach of cell transplantation and to improve the efficacy of the therapy (Tabata, 2009). Among the biomaterials, the natural and synthetic biodegradable ones are the most commonly used polymers. These polymers attracted interest because of their flexibility in chemical manipulation (Vazquez, Ruiz, Zúñiga, Koppel & Olvera, 2015). Natural polymers belong to the first biodegradable biomaterials. They have a high level of biocompatibility leading for the cells to easily attach and grow with excellent viability. However, a limitation with natural materials is their mechanical and physical stability leading the researchers to develop technologies to improve and reinforce these biomaterials’ mechanical and shape stability (Stratton, Shelke, Hoshino, Rudraiah & Kumbar, 2016; Alaribe, Manoto & Motaung, 2016). A common natural polymer is a polysaccharide which presents good hemocompatibility properties. Chitin is a common natural polysaccharide and its fully or partially deacetylated form is chitosan.
Nanomaterials have higher potential in the field of healthcare, since enhanced bone cell functions are observed by using nanomaterials than micromaterials and is also coming up today for bone fracture repair as new sustainable level of matter (Wang, Yan, Yang & Li, 2016). In bone applications, putting inorganic nanoparticles together can mimic the nanostructure of the bone naturally found in human body (Li et al,