| Bone tissue engineering has assisted in the last decades to an evolution in which merely replacement implants gave room to more complex regenerative approaches. Several challenges still remain. Although biocompatibility and biodegradability mechanism are now reasonably known and controlled, they still need to precisely match the physiological rhythm of bone renewal, while maintaining the adequate structural properties to support the host tissue growth. These mechanisms are first regulated at the nanoscale through the cellular interactions with the materials. Therefore, there is an urge to begin the control of materials surface interaction with the environment at the nanoscale and to go up to the micro and macro levels that are comprised in the natural bone structure.;The main goal of this thesis was to give a step further in producing in vitro materials able to mimic the structural and chemical environment necessary to bone growth. Therefore, micro and nanofabrication techniques were used to recapitulate the complex environment of mineralized tissues. As bone is based in a mineral/organic natural composite, bioactive glass and chitosan were chosen as materials to be combined in order to mimic bone structure. Bioactive glass was engineered at the nanoscale, to better follow Nature´s path. The topics explored in this this thesis contributed for a deeper understanding of the BG-NPs production. Moreover, the described research work is based on simple techniques highly competitive against other existing technologies for bone´s structure mimicking. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.). |
