Applications of gold nanoparticle in regenerative medicine

Abstract

One of the most important challenges nowadays is to provide a successful solution for the treatment of damaged body tissues. The treatment of this disease has been done by different scenario such as long-term drug therapy, organ transplantation, and using special medical equipment and devices. However, all of these scenarios have their own drawbacks, for example, drug therapy is able to control or stop the progress of disease in short term, while, organ transplantation is limited by resource of organ providing. Hence, the regenerative medicine (RM) is introduced to overcome many if not all of these limitations. The main goal of RM is to develop biological substitutes and novel treatment in order to regenerate, preserve, or improve damaged tissue, in addition to restore the function that is lost because of disease, aging, and damage or defects. RM is an interdisciplinary branch of medicine including biomaterial science (act as scaffolds for cell functionality), stem cells (provide biological functionality), and bioactive agents (provide signals and guide the stem cells fate). The gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have shown to be safe and biocompatible materials to better support the stem cells as scaffolds, and act as nano patterned surfaces, in addition to carry the growth factors and drug delivery systems in RM. In this chapter, we focus on the applications of AuNP applications in RM. Furthermore, we will discuss important physicochemical features of nanocomposites fabricated in mix with AuNPs, and how these characteristics of AuNPs could enhanced the RM products.