Healthy, fit and sprightly into old age - especially in view of increasing life expectancy, these wishes are on top on the list of many people. However, bone and joint degradation as well as tissue, muscle and tendon loss are not absent from the 60+ life span. But younger people can also be affected by bone and joint damage after illness or accidents. To repair such defects and enhance quality of life, the Fraunhofer IKTS group "Biologized Materials and Structures" develops and researches implants and implant materials that mimic the human bone structure.
The aim of biomimetic material allocation is to stimulate and promote the body's own cell organization build-up through selectively degradable and/or bioinert bone substitute materials as well as naturally structured assembly. The ceramic bone substitute serves as a scaffold and lead structure into which the body's own cells grow into. Such mechanically stable bone substitute materials are also combined with growth factors. In recent works we found that the theoretically biodegradable artifical bone structures of the group are degradable also in reality as was proven in animal models on new bone formation in that very area of the implant.