Nacre, a natural, multi-use, and timely biomaterial for bone graft substitution

Ganggang Zhang (1) , Alice Brion (1) , Anne-Sophie Willemin (1) , Marie-Hélène Piet (1) , Vanessa Moby (1) , Arnaud Bianchi (1) , Didier Mainard (1) , Laurent Galois (1) , Pierre Gillet (2) , Marthe Rousseau (1)

1 IMoPA - Ingénierie Moléculaire et Physiopathologie Articulaire
2 CHRU Nancy - Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Nancy

During the past two decades, with a huge and rapidly increasing clinical need for bone regeneration and repair, bone substitutes are more and more seen as a potential solution. Major innovation efforts are being made to develop such substitutes , some having advanced even to clinical practice. It is now time to turn to natural biomaterials. Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, is an organic matrix-calcium carbonate coupled shell structure produced by molluscs. In vivo and in vitro studies have revealed that nacre is osteoinductive, osteoconductive, biocompatible, and biodegradable. With many other outstanding qualities, nacre represents a natural and multi-use biomaterial as a bone graft substitute. This review aims at summarising the current needs in orthopaedic clinics and the challenges for the development of bone substitutes; most of all, we systematically review the physiological characteristics and biological evidence of nacre's effects centred on osteogen-esis, and finally we put forward the potential use of nacre as a bone graft substitute.

Mots clés: biomaterial; clinical applications; biomineralization; bone graft substitute; nacre

Domaines: Biomatériaux

Ganggang Zhang, Alice Brion, Anne-Sophie Willemin, Marie-Hélène Piet, Vanessa Moby, et al.. Nacre, a natural, multi-use, and timely biomaterial for bone graft substitution. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A, 2017, 105 (2), pp.662-671. ⟨10.1002/jbm.a.35939⟩. ⟨hal-02112022⟩