Table 3.
Applications of bioceramic scaffolds in tissue engineering.
| Field of application | Material/scaffold involved | Recipient | Stage of use/research | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bone defect repair | Porous scaffolds made of HA, biphasic calcium phosphates, bioactive glasses (e.g., 45S5 Bioglass®, 13–93) | H | Clinical use (the products are FDA approved) | Hench (1998) and Dorozhkin (2010a, 2012) |
| Joint prosthesis | Bioactive glass–ceramic coating with trabecular architecture on bioceramic acetabular cup | – | Promising experimental results achieved in the framework of the EC-funded project “MATCh.” Neither in vitro nor in vivo tests are currently available in the literature | Vitale-Brovarone et al. (2012a,b) and Baino et al. (2015, 2016a,b) |
| Orbital implant | Porous spheres made of alumina (the so-called “Bioceramic implant”), HA (examples of commercial products: coralline HA – Bioeye®, synthetic HA – FCI3, bovine HA – Molteno M-sphere) or 45S5 Bioglass®/polyethylene composite (Medpor-Plus) | H | HA and alumina implants, being FDA approved since many years, are routinely used in the clinical practice | Naik et al. (2007) and Baino et al. (2014) |
| Early uses of 45S5 Bioglass®/polyethylene composite spheres in the clinical practice | ||||
| Wound healing | 45S5 Bioglass®/polymer composite meshes | AS | No study involving human patients available | Day et al. (2004) and Rai et al. (2010) |
| Skin tissue engineering | Fibrous constructs comprising MBG fibers as such or in combination with a polymer | – | No biological study available | Hong et al. (2010) and Jia et al. (2011) |
| Lung tissue engineering | Sol–gel glass foams or PDLLA/45S5 Bioglass® porous composites | IV | No in vivo study available | Tan et al. (2002) and Verrier et al. (2004) |
| Muscle tissue engineering | Phophate glass fibrous constructs | – | No in vivo study available | Ahmed et al. (2004), Shah et al. (2014), and Shah et al. (2015) |
| Peripheral nerve repair | Bioactive glass fibrous constructs | AS | No study involving human patients available | Vitale-Brovarone et al. (2012a) and Kim et al. (2015) |
H, humans; AS, animal study; IV, in vitro tests with cells.