Bioinspired Materials and Biocompatibility

Background

Biocompatibility is a complex concept related to reliability and performance of implanted materials. An agreement on the definition of biocompatibility, which is the first component of this concept, was achieved in the Chester Consensus Conference, 1986. Williams gave the definition of biocompatibility, which is widely used in the biomaterials community today. This useful definition was “Biocompatibility is the ability of a material to perform with an appropriate host response in a specific application.” (Williams, 1987; Ratner et al., 2004). This accepted definition emphasizes that, there is not absolute suitability of one material for applications and all materials initiate a host response in some way.

Implanted devices in living tissue are able to consist of only biomaterial component or both of biomaterial component and biological component (proteins and cells) (Anderson, 2001). Implanted biomaterials initiate generally inflammatory and foreign body reaction in the body. Implanted tissue engineered devices, including both biomaterial, biological components, activate host defense systems including the inflammatory response, also known as the innate immune system, and immune response, which is considered as acquired or adaptive immune system. (Anderson, 2007). In this case, inflammatory and immune responses must be evaluated together for overall safety and efficacy of the tissue-engineered device.