Orthopedics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Orthopedics, including details on chronic injuries, muscoskeletal disorders, surgery, reconstruction.

Ceramic composites as matrices and scaffolds for drug delivery in tissue engineering.

Habraken WJ, Wolke JG, Jansen JA

Department of Periodontology and Biomaterials, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Ceramic composites and scaffolds are popular implant materials in the field of dentistry, orthopedics and plastic surgery. For bone tissue engineering especially CaP-ceramics or cements and bioactive glass are suitable implant materials due to their osteoconductive properties. In this review the applicability of these ceramics but also of ceramic/polymer composites for bone tissue engineering is discussed, and in particular their use as drug delivery systems. Overall, the high density and slow biodegradability of ceramics is not beneficial for tissue engineering purposes. To address these issues, macroporosity can be introduced often in combination with osteoinductive growth factors and cells. Ceramics are good carriers for drugs, in which release patterns are strongly dependent on the chemical consistency of the ceramic, type of drug and drug loading. Biodegradable polymers like polylactic acid, gelatin or chitosan are used as matrices for ceramic particles or as adjuvant to calcium phosphate cements. The use of these polymers can introduce a tailored biodegradation/drug release to the ceramic material.

Published 12 June 2007 in Adv Drug Deliv Rev, 59(4): 234-48.
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