Addition of nanoscaledbioinspiredsurface features: A revolution for bone related implants and scaffolds?

Our expanding ability to handle the “literally invisible” building blocks of our world has started to provoke a seismic shift on the technology, environment and health sectorsin our society. During the last two decades, it has become increasingly evident that the “nano-sized” subunits composing many materials – living, natural and synthetic – are becoming more and more accessible for predefined manipulations at the nanosize scale. The use of equally nanoscale sized or functionalised tools may, therefore, grant us unprecedented prospectsto achieve many therapeutic aims. In the past decadeitbecame clear that nano-scale surface topography significantly influences cell behaviour and may, potentially, be utilised as a powerful tool to enhance the bioactivity and/ or integration of implanted devices.

In this review, we briefly outline the state of the art and some of the current approaches andconcepts for the future utilisation of nanotechnology to create biomimeticimplantable medical devices and scaffolds for in vivo and in vitrotissue engineering,with a focus onbone. Based on current knowledge it must be concluded that not the materials and surfaces themselves but the systematic biological evaluation of these newmaterial conceptsrepresent the bottleneck for new biomedical product development based on nanotechnologicalprinciples. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 102A: 275–294, 2014.