Instructive function of surface structure of calcium phosphate ceramics in bone regeneration

The incidence of patients which require spinal fusion or bone regeneration in large bone defects caused by trauma, tumors, tumor resection, infections or abnormal skeletal development, is on the rise. Traditionally, in both spinal fusion surgery and other bone regeneration approaches, bone grafts are applied. Even though autografts have shown to provide the best performance in bone regeneration till date, it is of great need to develop and improve alternatives to overcome the limited availability of autografts. Being chemically similar to the inorganic components of hard tissues, calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramics are long been evaluated as synthetic bone grafting materials. Most recently, it has been found that the bone forming ability of CaP ceramics could be improved through physic-chemical modification. For the best, CaP ceramics could be made osteoinductive and such osteoinductive CaP ceramics could aid in the repair of critical-size bone defects. In this thesis, both in vitro cell culture and an in vivo osteoinduction study model (i.e. ectopic implantation) where applied to study the role of physic-chemical properties of CaP ceramics - with the emphasis on the role of surface structures - in bone formation