Biologically-inspired nanomaterials and nano-bio-magnetism: a synergy among new emerging concepts in Regenerative Medicine

Materials science is today experiencing a paradigmatic change in the development of new smart devices for biomedical applications. Indeed there is a strong demand for new solutions able to face and solve degenerative and highly invalidating diseases that involve a steadily increasing number of people, also due to the progressive ageing of the population. In particular, the regeneration of hard tissues (i.e. bone, cartilage, tooth) is one of the most demanding issues in medicine and requires smart devices showing high mimicry of the host tissues and able to instruct and address progenitor cells to the regeneration of new functional tissue. This chapter highlights the emerging concepts of bio-inspiration, by which natural processes can be reproduced in lab and addressed to the synthesisof scaffolds mimicking complex multi-functional tissues. Besides, nanobiomagnetism is presented as a new strategy to develop on demand bio-devices that can be activated and controlled by noninvasive remote signaling. These new concepts promise to be one of the most relevant drivers for the development of new generation smart biomedical devices with high regenerative performance in the next decade.