Drug Delivery Strategies for Bone Tissue Regeneration

Bone tissue regeneration is a complex well-orchestrated physiological process, involving a number of cell types and intracellular and extracellular molecular signalling pathways. With the increased life expectancy and the consequent aging of population, scientific efforts to speed up the body’s natural bone healing process and to reduce and treat associated complications are highly requested. The research in this field has been firstly focused extensively on developing CaP-based ceramics endowed of osteo-conductive properties and after, on degradable polymeric scaffolds for the controlled localized delivery of bioactive agents. Recent advantages in the field of engineered scaffolds have been obtained from the investigation of composite scaffolds designed by the combination of bio ceramics and/or biodegradable polymers in order to obtain osteo-conductive structures that can mimic the natural properties of bone tissue. Recently, nano materials used in bone tissue regeneration for the delivery of tailored drugs have shown to offer new opportunities to provide more focused and fine-tuned treatment of diseases at a molecular level, thus enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of drugs and reducing side effects. In this chapter natural, synthetic, hybrid and nano materials will be discussed summarizing and analyzing their chemical and mechanical properties as well as the results of in vitro or in vivo release studies and their biocompatibility and ability to induce bone tissue regeneration.