Naturally derived biomaterials for development of composite bone scaffold: A review

Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing demand of tissue engineered bone scaffolds as a substitute material for diseased or damaged bone segments. A variety of synthetic and natural biomaterials have been explored by researchers for development of composite scaffold. Naturally derived biomaterials have the advantages of immunomodulating, anti-toxic and biomimetic properties with the cellular environment in vivo, when compared to synthetic biomaterials. In this paper, different protein and polysaccharide based biomaterials used for developing composite bone scaffolds are reviewed. The properties of composite scaffolds developed from these biomaterials are highlighted. The study also includes different natural materials and biowastes which are used for deriving bioceramics for producing composite bone scaffolds. The overall study gives a brief idea on the importance of protein and polysaccharide based biomaterials and bioceramics for composite bone scaffold development and scope for future work in the field of naturally derived biomaterials.