Types of Biomaterials Used for Tissue Engineering

As mentioned before, the response of living cells towards the scaffold material plays a vital role in the selection of material used in the fabrication of tissue engineering scaffold. Accordingly, the number of published articles concerning biomaterials used in tissue engineering applications has progressively increased. And so, the field of materials science, generally, and biomaterials, specifically, plays an important role in the development of tissue engineering. Therefore, most of materials have been studied and developed for scaffold fabrication. Due to the large number of these materials, it was approved to classify them. Several ways have been used to classify them; meanwhile, three ways for classification have been accepted by many materials scientists. The following sections discuss the classification of biomaterials and their applications. Biomaterials used in the fabrication of scaffolds, such as bioinert ceramic, bioactive ceramics, polymers, and composites, are discussed herein, however, metal biomaterials are not presented here because their applications in regenerative medicine are limited as a result of high-temperature fabrication of metal scaffolds which is unsuitable for in situ cell and biomolecules incorporation.