Preface

Biomaterials are involved in almost everything that interacts with biological system. They can be either a living structure or a biomedical device that performs, evaluates, treats, augments, or replaces any tissue, organ or function of the body. The need for the development of biomaterials as scaffold for tissue regeneration is driven by the increasing demands for materials that mimic functions of extracellular matrices of body tissues. Significant progress has been made over the past decade in improving the biological and mechanical performance, biocompatibility and degradability of scaffold materials by adopting novel strategies, such as bio-nanotechnology, protein engineering and bionanofabrication. Despite all the endeavors, it has proved challenging to achieve a simple, predictable and cost-effective design for biocompatible scaffold materials. A large body of knowledge in biomaterials is now available. Unfortunately, apart from sporadic papers, no books have yet been published to assess methodologies involved in biomaterial design, synthesis and their impaction the biocompatibility of biomaterials. With contributions from a group of frontier researchers with their expertise ranged from biomaterial synthesis and functionality, to preclinical and clinical research in tissue regeneration, this eBook is the first of the kind that capitalizes the state of the art design strategies for biocompatible scaffold materials. In particular, this eBook discusses some of the latest work that demonstrated challenges on the biocompatibility of scaffold over time after implantation, and addresses the need of new technologies and strategies to develop materials with long-lasting biocompatibility and scaffold function. The eBook is composed of 11 Chapters with 3 distinctive focus areas. It begins with overview on current understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of biomaterial-biological system interaction (Chapter 1, and 2), followed by Chapter 3 to 5 focusing on scaffold design and fabrication. Chapter 6 to 11 presents cases involving application of different biomaterials in tissue regeneration. Without doubt; the publication of such a eBook will potentially draw social and commercial interest in advancement of scaffold materials for improvement of human health.