Peptide-mediated Bone Tissue Engineering

Bone is a highly vascularized tissue and one of the most dynamic tissues in terms of self-renewal throughout one’s life. It possesses a high regenerative capacity, which makes it possible that a majority of bone fractures will heal well without the need for major intervention. However, some large bone defects and fractures require medical intervention for bone repair and regeneration. Proteins, growth factors, and peptides have played a remarkable role in bone regeneration. However, the use of proteins and growth factors in tissue engineering has several limitations, such as cost and difficulty in production, immunogenicity, and a short half-life. In addition to these drawbacks, they have many active domains, which affect their functionality. Recently, an alternative to proteins and growth factors has emerged for the use in tissue engineering. This competent approach includes biomimetic peptides, which are amino acid sequences derived from the functional domains of soluble or extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Biological materials for tissue regeneration can be functionalized with these peptides to either mediate the adhesion of cells or to be released as soluble ligands. These short peptides are easy to design and synthesize, facilitating their use as cost-effective and efficient scaffolds for regenerative medicine. In this extensive chapter, several of the peptides that have potential for bone tissue engineering, including those that facilitate cell adhesion, prompt osteogenic differentiation of progenitor cells, or those that mediate angiogenesis which is a crucial requirement for proper bone regeneration will be discussed.