Marine organisms as sources of materials for instructive scaffolds design

During the last years, there has been an even increasing interest for natural derived materials and for the study of the biophysical processes involved in their formation. In fact, despite the possibility to fabricate home-made materials in reproducible way to meet specific performance demands, the complexity of biological systems suggested to consider nature as an inspiration for the design and synthesis of new types of materials. In this context, marine biomaterials are a area of research with significant applications. In fact, the marine environment represents a unique resource of natural inorganic and organic materials with peculiar properties such as chemical and structural complexity, multifunctionality and miniaturization that are not possible to obtain in the laboratory. Therefore, the isolation, characterization and processability of marine materials are crucial aspects for the development of the marine biotechnologies industry. The aim of this study was to to isolate and synthesize naturally-derived materials from marine organisms for biomedical use and namely for tissue engineering applications. The study has been divided into two main parts. The first part concerned the isolation and characterization of an important natural biopolymer: collagen. In particular, Acid-solubilized collagen (ASC) and pepsin-solubilized collagen (PSC) were isolated from Loligo Vulgaris squid mantle and comparatively characterized. In the second part of the work a novel method to process cuttlefish bone powders for the production of highly bioactive ceramics formulations has been developed.