Choose a biodegradable polymer with good mechanical properties and slow degredation profile and you may add HAp to make a composite so you can load whatever factor you want, to the polymer matrix. Ceramic (HAp) will improve mechanical properies and mimic original bone tissue. This is the general strategy choosen by many researchers. Of course you can go for ceramic or polymer alone.

Thank you very much dear Menekse Ermis

What about polymethylmethacrylate based cements? Do you have any experience comparing the effectiveness of biodegradable polymers vs. non degradable polymers? I want to be more novel so I am thinking on different materials but unfortunately I am not sure about their biocompatibility. For example I am currently thinking about the effectiveness of Amethyst and quartz nano, micro and macrostructures in bone tissue engineering and regeneration with or without healing promotive factors. Do you have any idea about how can I convert these stones to a liquid phase?

For better clarification I want to combine the healing promotive factors with the liquid phase of these types of stones and repolymerize them in order to produce a novel but well assembled hybrid scaffold. Do you have any experience helping me in this issue?

Please accept my kind regards

Ali,

I am not specialized in ceramics but what i little know you can powder them. And if you can control their size (if you can create nano sized particles) then using a hot melt procedure you add them to metacrylated cements (even some are commercially available) and cast the composite molten material in the shape you desire. If you were going to use block ceramic sintering is prefered where you can control grain size and porosity.

For polymers PMMA is a very good choice FDA approved, biocompatible, readily used widely. In the literature you can find many examples of PMMA-ceramic composites.

There are so many studies on hard tissue engineering (one of the popular topics in tissue engineering), for novelty i recommend a thorough seach of the literature.

I recommend you start with constructing a scaffold by a readily used polymer and work on the composite techniques and go from there. At one point you will have to show how your product is superior to the current technology and by starting from it you will be easily point that.

Good luck.

Dear Menekse

Thank you for your response. Please keep in touch in the future.

With the best wishes and good luck

Ali

Thank you Ali, any help I can provide :)

I strongly recommend to take a look at www.innotere.de

This company just starts to sell a new kind of biodegradable bone replacement material with huge advantages compared to ceramics. They use CNC-printers to produce pieces for medical purpose but also inserts for cell culture.

The best would probably be to take a look at their recent publications and them give them a call (the products are not yet on their website): http://www.innotere.de/cms/en/publications.html biodegradable bone replacement materials

Best, Timm

Hi Ali,

Keep in mind there are some basic characteristics in scaffold development: biocompatible, biodegredable, optimal pore size, mechanical strength, and inter-connectivity. Alginate and chitosan could be some alternatives for your material. If you want to mimic bone element, maybe you can use apatites, such as carbonated or hydroxy apatite. If your focus is matrix, you can use collagen.

Good luck!