Biomimetic Hydroxyapatite a Potential Universal Nanocarrier for Cellular Internalization & Drug Delivery.

Purpose: Functional biomaterials can be used as drug loading devices, components for tissue engineering or as biological probes. As such, the design, synthesis and evaluation of a variety of local-drug delivery structures has been undertaken over the past few decades with the ultimate aim of providing materials that can encapsulate a diverse array of drugs (in terms of their sizes, chemical compositions and chemical natures (i.e.

Synthesis of hydroxyapatite nanotubes for biomedical applications.

Single phase, stoichiometrically pure, hollow nanotubes of hydroxyapatite have been synthesized and single-particle analysis has been performed to successfully prove the sole formation of Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2 phase. The facile synthesis involves a sol-gel process under neutral conditions in the presence of a sacrifical anodic alumina template. The structures formed are hollow nanotubes that have been characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, SAED, EELS, EDS and BET measurements.