Abstract
With advances in bone tissue regeneration and engineering technology, various biomaterials as artificial bone substitutes have been widely developed and innovated for the treatment of bone defects or diseases. However, there are no available natural and synthetic biomaterials replicating the natural bone structure and properties under physiological conditions. The characteristic properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) make them an ideal candidate for developing innovative biomimetic materials in the bone biomedical field. Indeed, CNT-based materials and their composites possess the promising potential to revolutionize the design and integration of bone scaffolds or implants, as well as drug therapeutic systems. This review summarizes the unique physicochemical and biomedical properties of CNTs as structural biomaterials and reinforcing agents for bone repair as well as provides coverage of recent concerns and advancements in CNT-based materials and composites for bone tissue regeneration and engineering. Moreover, this review discusses the research progress in the design and development of novel CNT-based delivery systems in the field of bone tissue engineering.
Highlights
Millions of people around the world become victims of bone defects every year, due to the presence of arthralgia, osteoporosis, tumors, infection, congenital malformations, sports injuries, traffic accidents, natural disasters, etc. [1,2,3]
The results indicated that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) showed potential to control the release of both low and high molecular weight hydrophilic drugs, representing a useful multimodal drug delivery platform for bone tissue engineering applications
The bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2-loaded CNT gel-based scaffold exhibited the prominent mechanical integrity and advanced electro-physiological functions; compared with adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) cultured on pristine hydrogels, their spontaneous osteogenesis on bioelectrical gel scaffolds increased by approximately 400%
Summary
Millions of people around the world become victims of bone defects every year, due to the presence of arthralgia, osteoporosis, tumors, infection, congenital malformations, sports injuries, traffic accidents, natural disasters, etc. [1,2,3]. The interlinked nano-network structure and appropriate porosity of CNTs are conducive to the material exchange of extracellular matrix (ECM) in bone tissue Their adjustable surface chemistry and high affinity for cell-binding proteins can be used to regulate cell morphology and promote stem cell differentiation into osteocytes, especially osteoblasts and neuronal lineage cells [31,32,33]. Existing nanometer synthesis methods can prepare parallel or randomly orientated CNTs with a similar fibrillar hierarchy structure to ECM, and MWCNTs have been proven to reflect the band/gap structure of collagen as bone-like HA [56,57] These tubular CNTs have an extremely large surface-area-to-volume ratio, making them suitable for supplying more sites for efficient adhesion of proteins, as well as providing higher drug loading capacity [58]
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