Challenges and Future Perspectives of Using Bioactive Scaffolds in Brain Repair

Introduction: Scientific and technological developments have allowed the transfer of knowledge to the translational vision of materials, under an increasingly diverse scenario of their natural and synthetic components. One of the contemporary challenges is to move beyond the structural concept of scaffoldsScaffolds and turn them into bioactive scaffoldsScaffolds, which means an advance in the possibility of forming vehicles for different compounds that can generate biological effects through a wide range of active principal components. Methods: A systematic review of articles was conducted using the PRISMA system in Web of Science using various keywords and a 10-year timespan. A total of 995 articles were obtained using key words and boolean operators. Finally we included 112 articles of interest. Results: These scaffoldsScaffolds are expected to have neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects and modulate the processes involved in tissue repair and neuroregeneration. It is necessary to more clearly define molecular mechanisms of binding, adhesion, and release of biologically proactive molecules to exert regenerative actions in the tissue matrix and target cells. The reproducibility and accuracy in the design of the different scaffoldsScaffolds according to the materials composing them, as well as the minimization of adverse and collateral effects, is a future challenge and is still in progress. Conclusion: New trends define the future of biomaterialsBiomaterials beyond their structural perspective. Natural and synthetic components have been developed, integrating active principals that can act biologically through a wide range of substances, drugs, genes, biological factors and stem cells for the development of new scaffoldsScaffolds. The expectation of a dual effect with both structural and biological kinetics also poses challenges linked to precision regenerative medicineRegenerative medicine and acceptable risk/benefit balance in its application in humans.