Biomimetics and Marine materials in drug delivery and tissue engineering

Abstract

During the last two decades, biomimetics has provided mankind new directions for the utilization of natural organic and inorganic skeletons for novel drug delivery systems and new medical treatment approaches with unique designs ranging from the macro- to the nanoscale. The use of ready-made organic and inorganic marine skeletons has potentially created an opportunity of presenting one of the simplest cures to fundamental issues hampering the future development of regenerative medicine, dentistry, and orthopedics such as providing a richness of framework designs and devices and abundant and available sources of osteopromotive analogues and biomineralization proteins. Organic matrix and inorganic marine skeletons possess a habitat ideal for the proliferation of added mesenchymal stem cell populations and promoting clinically acceptable bone formation. It has been proven that self-sustaining musculoskeletal tissues can be supported by coral and marine sponge skeletons, and bone mineralization can be promoted by the extracts of spongin collagen and nacre seashell organic matrices. This idea is reinforced by the fact that bone morphogenetic protein molecules are produced by endodermal cells into the developing skeleton. Furthermore, the regenerative signaling proteins in bone therapeutics such as TGF and Wnt are also present in early marine sponge development and instrumental to the activation of stem cells in cnidarians. This chapter aims to give a brief background into the nature, morphology, and application of some of these structures in bone grafts, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and specific extracts such as proteins for regenerative medicine.