Bioactive Materials for Bone Tissue Engineering

For early biomaterials, it was required to have a combination of physicochemical properties, suitable to replace human body tissues and to be biologically inert. Since then a long way has been brought to the third generation of biomaterials, whose role is to be both resorbable and bioactive, that is, to be able to elicit a controlled action in physiological conditions. Recently, the advances in cellular proteomics and genomics paved the way to the fourth generation of biomaterials, known as biomimetic and smart materials, and to their application in regenerative medicine. There is a wide range of materials used for orthopaedics and dentistry, from metals, alloys, ceramics, and polymers to bioactive glass systems and hybrid composites. It is very important to know the performance of these materials used in clinical practice or of some newly developed materials, starting from in vitro tests to the in vivo animal models.