Vuk Uskoković

Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chapman University, Irvine, CA 92618-1908, USA

Calcium phosphate is the most natural inorganic substitute of boney tissues. Yet, because of its ordinariness and specific weaknesses – e.g., low capacity for stable conjugation with active compounds, weak morphological control and a large propensity for aggregation - it has frequently been denounced as a material of the past. Its use is currently on the way to be reduced to the strengthening and osteoconductive component of tissue engineering constructs only. However, the structural complexity of calcium phosphates is immense and, especially in the nanoparticulate form, they are able to display an array of exciting properties that go beyond those for which they have been standardly known. These properties will be elaborated in this lecture and include the ability to achieve sustained and tunable drug release profiles; injectability; the osteogenic potential and the ability to inhibit osteoclastogenesis; usability for the intracellular delivery of bioactive compounds; antimicrobial activity; and processability into macroporous tissue engineering constructs. A precise design of materials based on calcium phosphate nanoparticles only is expected to lead to a new generation of materials for therapeutic and regenerative purposes. Such materials would make the use of expensive bone growth factors, antibiotics, viral vectors and polymers as viscous components unnecessary. They would be classifiable as socially aware materials due to their applicative elegancy, inexpensiveness,in situsynthesizability and easy transferability across the rich-poor gap.