Read the featured papers handpicked by the editorial team
Published 22 September, 2020
Orthopedic implants and devices for bone fractures and defects: Past, present and perspective
Tiffany Kim, Carmine WangSee, Xiaochun Li, Donghui Zhua
Bone is a unique tissue that is capable of repairing itself after damage. However, there are certain instances of fractures and defects that require clinical intervention for proper alignment and healing. As with any implant, careful consideration of the material used to create the implants to treat these problems is needed. If the incorrect material is chosen, the implants themselves can lead to bone fractures or defects, or bone healing may not take place at all. All three classes of biomaterials–metals, ceramics, and polymers–have been used in the treatment of both bone fractures and bone defects, and each has its own unique benefits and limitations for its applications. Furthermore, composites of these different materials have also been created to try to take advantage of all the different benefits offered by each different material. This review highlights different materials that have been used for the development of internal fixators and bone graft substitutes to treat fracture and bone defects as well as their limitations and needed future research.
Conductive Nanomaterials for Cardiac Tissues Engineering
Wei Liu, Luming Zhao, Changyong Wang, Jin Zhou
Myocardial infarction (MI) is a worldwide disease with high incidence and high fatality rate. In the past decade, a lot of research work based on the method of cardiac tissues engineering has received wide attention from researchers and has been demonstrated to have important application prospects in the treatment of MI. To make engineered cardiac tissue (ECTs) simulate the characteristics of the natural myocardial microenvironment better, the unique electrophysiological characteristics of myocardial tissue should be considered. Therefore, conductive nanomaterials are adopted to construct ECTs to make up for the lack of traditional scaffold materials. In this article, the research progresses of conductive nanomaterials application in the field of cardiac tissue engineering are summarized, and two treatment strategies of cardiac patch construction and injectable materials for MI treatment are discussed respectively. Related research work provided reference for the study of cardiac tissue engineering based conductive nanomaterials.