Revisiting bioceramics: Bone regenerative and local drug delivery systems

The use of bioceramics for designing scaffolds for bone tissue engineering and multifunctional nanoparticles for biomedical applications has produced a great impact in this research area in the last few years. It has been a tremendous evolution from the first generation ceramics towards novel biomaterials thanks to the great possibilities that modern bioceramics have to offer to the clinic. This review focus on the last advances in bioceramics scaffolds for bone regenerative technologies, and on the boom of multifunctional mesoporous silica nanoparticles as drug delivery systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.