Abstract
Bone tissue performs several mechanical, biological, and chemical functions. In addition, the structural supporting is one of the important roles of bone in the body comparable to the mineral ion homeostasis. When bone tissue is defected for some reasons, the bone structure and functions are often injured or lost. As one trial to ameliorate the bad conditions of bone tissue, bone regeneration has been tried based on tissue engineering. The basic idea of tissue engineering is to induce tissue regeneration by use of growth factors (genes), stem cells or the scaffold of cell growth and proliferation as well as their combinations. In the first half of this article, briefly explaining the controlled release of growth factor with a biodegradable hydrogel, concrete example of bone regeneration by the release system is introduced. The macroscopic bone shape is recovered most perfectly under tissue engineering technique, but the difference in the microstructure, mechanical and physical properties between the regenerated and original bones should be examined before clinical application. Bone is a composite composed of mineral biological apatite and collagen fibrils. Biological apatite is an ionic crystal that crystallizes in a hexagonal lattice providing anisotropic bone reinforcement. In the last half, therefore, we introduce crystallographic approach to evaluate the regenerated bone function based on the orientation distribution of biological apatite relating to its mechanical property.
