Abstract:
Although some of the small damages in bone tissues can recover due to self-regeneration, this becomes challenging in large damages. When bone is insufficient to regenerate itself, different treatment methods are applied. Though traditional tissue transplantation methods, such as autografts ensure success in some treatments, these may comprise limitations, e.g. donor shortage, risk of infection, and tissue incompatibility. Therefore, the need for functional biomaterials developed using tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies is increasing. Biomaterials can be designed as biomimetic of structure, composition and functional properties of tissues and manufactured using natural and artificial components. In the historical process, permanent implants consisting of inert materials used to replace damaged tissues has been followed by the development of bioactive and biodegradable biomaterials promoting self-regeneration of tissues The inorganic composition of natural bone consists of hydroxyapatite with ionic substitutions (e.g. carbonate, silicate, sodium, potassium, magnesium). Therefore, hydroxyapatite is used in bone repair and regeneration, drug release systems, antibacterial, anti-tumour and pro-angiogenic biomaterials. Since synthetic hydroxyapatite shows low solubility and bioactivity due to its high stability, current studies aim to enhance its bioactivity by doping it with various ionic substitutions as mimetic of biological apatite. In this study, current studies on use of hydroxyapatite as biomaterials and significant ionic substitution forms are investigated.
