Structural bioinorganics

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The localised delivery of bioinorganics for tissue repair has come about through serendipitous findings in degradable biomaterials studies and now a tremendous opportunity exists to link bioinorganics and biomaterials, to create what I term 'structural bioinorganics'. These being biomaterials that exert a desirable biological response by the release of inorganic (non-carbon) ions or molecules from which they are made. They thereby serve a dual function having structural integrity and bioactivity. Engineering has performed well in restoring mechanical function of joints and valves with prostheses, but has been less impressive in the field of regeneration where understanding of several disciplines is required to make progress. Bone is perhaps the area where most promise lies due to its inherent limited regenerative capacity. Until recently researchers had thought that recombinant bone morphogenic protein products were the 'magic bullet' for bone regeneration, however there have been a number of reports of complications and even death following and a recognition that they are at best as good as bone autograft and significantly more expensive. For this reason there is renewed interest in finding non-protein based regenerative approaches that can offer patients and health providers a cost effective improvement on the current situation of bone harvesting surgery prior to grafting. Furthermore, principles or wound repair are largely similar, requiring angiogenesis, initial tissue deposition followed by remodelling, and progress on enhancing the initial stages of tissue healing can be applied to other tissues. Using osteoconductive cements and nanostructured particulates as model hosts for bioinorganics the applicant seeks to explore the potential for stimulation of bone healing by compounds with which his laboratory has made important recent new preliminary findings, or has unique insight as well as compounds known in the literature which are linked to stimulating bone healing but as yet are not utilised.