A review of bioceramics scaffolds for bone defects in different types of animal models: HA andß-TCP.

Increased life expectancy has led to an increase in the use of bone substitutes in numerous nations, with over two million bone-grafting surgeries performed worldwide each year. A bone defect can be caused by trauma, infections, and tissue resections which can self-heal due to the osteoconductive nature of the native extracellular matrix components. However, natural self-healing is time-consuming, and new bone regeneration is slow, especially for large bone defects. It also remains a clinical challenge for surgeons to have a suitable bone substitute. To date, there are numerous potential treatments for bone grafting, including gold-standard autografts, allograft implantation, xenografts, or bone graft substitutes. Tricalcium phosphate (TCP) and hydroxyapatite (HA) are the most extensively used and studied bone substitutes due to their similar chemical composition to bone. The scaffolds should be testedin vivoandin vitrousing suitable animal models to ensure that the biomaterials work effectively as implants. Hence, this article aims to familiarize readers with the most frequently used animal models for biomaterials testing and highlight the available literature forin vivostudies using small and large animal models. This review summarizes the bioceramic materials, particularly HA andß-TCP scaffolds, for bone defects in small and large animal models. Besides, the design considerations for the pre-clinical animal model selection for bone defect implants are emphasized and presented.

Fabrication of alginate microspheres for drug delivery: A review.

Alginate microspheres (AMs) have received much attention as a novel drug delivery system owing to various advantages of alginate such as inexpensiveness, nontoxicity, biocompatibility and biodegradability. The well-designed fabrication method is essential to achieve desired AMs suitable for specific drug delivery system. Reports on AMs preparation techniques have increased rapidly in the last decade. A number of synthesis parameters have been investigated for the improvement of physical, chemical and biological properties of AMs. Hence, this review summarizes the work to date on the fabrication techniques of AMs for drug delivery system, including spray-drying, extrusion and emulsification/gelation technique. Besides, the influence of various factors such as alginate concentration, oil phase, surfactant, cross-linker concentrations, cross-linking time, stirring speed, model drug and drug content on the morphologies, properties and encapsulation efficiency (EE) of AMs via extrusion and emulsification/gelation technique are summarized. Before embarking on the development of any drug delivery system, a thorough understanding of drug release mechanism and factors that impact the drug release profile are essential, which are also covered in this review.

Effect of precursor's solubility on the mechanical property of hydroxyapatite formed by dissolution-precipitation reaction of tricalcium phosphate.

The effect of the solubility of the precursors, alpha tricalcium phosphate (α-TCP) and beta tricalcium phosphate (ß-TCP) on the mechanical strength of hydroxyapatite (HAp) bone substitute was investigated. Uniaxially pressed block starting from these precursors were treated hydrothermally with 1 mol/L of ammonia solution at 200°C for various durations. XRD analysis revealed that α-TCP block took 3 h whereas ß-TCP block took 240 h for complete transformation to HAp. The porosity of HAp obtained from ß-TCP block was found to be lower than that of HAp from α-TCP block. Diametral tensile strength of HAp from ß-TCP block showed a significantly higher value than that of HAp from α-TCP block. It is therefore concluded that solubility of precursor affects the mechanical strength of the HAp block.