Abstract
Chitosan is a natural, biodegradable cationic polysaccharide, which has a similar chemical structure and similar biological behaviors to the components of the extracellular matrix in the biomineralization process of teeth or bone. Its excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, and polyelectrolyte action make it a suitable organic template, which, combined with biomimetic mineralization technology, can be used to develop organic-inorganic composite materials for hard tissue repair. In recent years, various chitosan-based biomimetic organic-inorganic composite materials have been applied in the field of bone tissue engineering and enamel or dentin biomimetic repair in different forms (hydrogels, fibers, porous scaffolds, microspheres, etc.), and the inorganic components of the composites are usually biogenic minerals, such as hydroxyapatite, other calcium phosphate phases, or silica. These composites have good mechanical properties, biocompatibility, bioactivity, osteogenic potential, and other biological properties and are thus considered as promising novel materials for repairing the defects of hard tissue. This review is mainly focused on the properties and preparations of biomimetically mineralized composite materials using chitosan as an organic template, and the current application of various chitosan-based biomimetically mineralized composite materials in bone tissue engineering and dental hard tissue repair is summarized.
Highlights
Bone and teeth are the two main hard tissues in the human body
Since the composite materials are mainly composed of two parts—a chitosan organic template and inorganic minerals—we reviewed two aspects of the preparation methods of the composite materials: the preparations of various chitosan organic templates in composite materials and the biomimetic mineralization methods for preparing different inorganic minerals
Wang et al used carboxymethyl chitosan (CMC) as a polyelectrolyte template to stabilize amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP) in order to form nanocomplexes of CMC/ACP and fabricated mineralized collagen scaffolds using a biomimetic method based on the polymer-induced liquid precursor process
Summary
Bone and teeth are the two main hard tissues in the human body. Bone is a mineralized inorganic-organic composite, which is mainly composed of carbonated hydroxyapatite (HAP) and type I collagen [1]. Chitosan-based composite materials fabricated by the biomimetic mineralization technique have been widely used in the field of bone tissue engineering and enamel or dentin biomimetic repair. We first briefly introduce the basic structure and properties of chitosan and focus on the properties and preparation methods of chitosan-based biomimetically mineralized composite materials and their applications in human hard tissue repair in recent years. Many aspects of the recent applications of chitosan-based biomimetically mineralized composite materials in the fields of bone tissue engineering and dental hard tissue repair were reviewed and presented in detail, including types of chitosan and minerals, composite forms, other organic/inorganic components, preparation techniques of chitosan templates, methods of biomimetic mineralization, and important properties of composite materials. Because of the diverse properties of chitosan and its derivatives, they have been extensively applied in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, for example, they have been used in drug delivery [31,32], tissue engineering [20,33], wound management [34,35], gene and cancer therapy [36,37,38], antibiofilm drugs [39], etc
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