Dear Colleagues,

One of the main Sustainable Development Goals designated by the United Nations is a long and healthy life. As a result of ageing populations, the resection of organs after oncological operations or dangerous inflammations, as a result of traffic or sports accidents, and recently also as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic and other infectious diseases, there is a need to replace lost parts of the human body including tissues and organs. In addition, modern medicine widely uses the achievements of basic sciences, as well as the technical and physicochemical sciences. There is even an opinion that many of the current successes of medicine have become real mainly due to the implementation of avant-garde technical solutions serving it. One of the main determinants of technological development determining the achievement of the most advanced stage of Industry 4.0 is the development and implementation of more and more new engineering materials at the Materials 4.0 stage. Achieving the equally advanced stages of Medicine 4.0 and Dentistry 4.0 is an obvious goal, largely served by the advanced and extremely dynamically increasing stage of biomedical materials development. A special need has become to constantly support medicine with engineering activities, which largely applies to a wide group of medical devices, including implants, implant scaffolds, scaffolds and prostheses, as well as entire systems and various methods of drug delivery synthesized by engineers, which by definition are not medical devices.

Biomedical materials (also called biomaterials) are substances designed to interact with biological systems for therapeutic purposes. Biomedical materials are often used or adapted for medical applications. Thus they constitute a part or even the whole of a living organism or biomedical device that performs, improves on, or replaces a natural function. Such functions can be bioactive and interactive, as in the case of hip implants, or even when tissue is replaced by tissue engineering methods or relatively passive technologies (e.g., in heart valves). Biomedical materials are used in various fields of medicine, especially in regenerative medicine, surgery, and dentistry, for the treatment, repair, or replacement of body tissues; the improvement or restoration of tissue function; and for diagnostic purposes. Tissue engineering is extremely important, where natural tissues are replaced by cultured materials or even synthesized in a laboratory. Some of the biomedical materials are biodegradable and are used to initiate certain processes in the body. Scaffolds are one important area of application of biomedical materials. Biomedical materials are also widely used in connection with drug delivery (e.g., pharmaceutical products placed in the body to release the drug over long periods). The biomedical materials can be autografts, allografts, or xenografts used as transplant materials. Biomedical materials are used, among others, for replacing joints, as bone plates, bone cement, surgical sutures, clips and staples for closing wounds, pins and screws for stabilizing fractures, surgical meshes, breast implants, artificial ligaments and tendons, dental implants, stabilizers, blood vessel prostheses, heart valves, vascular grafts, stents, nerve cables, skin repair devices, intraocular lenses for eye surgery, contact lenses, and drug delivery systems. Biomedical materials  must be compatible with the organism, and before the product can be used in a clinical setting, biocompatibility issues must be resolved. For these reasons, biomedical materials are usually evaluated in different tests, which must be certified.

The essence of biomedical materials is their constant contact with living tissues, organisms, or microorganisms, so they should meet numerous requirements, including in the areas of medicine, biology, chemistry, tissue engineering, and materials engineering. Biomedical materials can be natural, although they are extremely often engineered, as they are synthesized using various methods and include metals, polymers, ceramics or composites, as well as porous and biotechnological materials. It is usually advisable to use surface engineering methods to ensure the expected properties of biomedical materials. Currently, the production and synthesis of biomedical materials require the use of various technologies and methods. These methods are often used to obtain the desired material, which is then processed using advanced material processing technologies to make a specific prosthesis or other implant type. Often, however, it is necessary to directly manufacture a specific product with individualized geometric features and properties tailored to the requirements of a particular patient. In such cases, additive manufacturing methods are widely and more commonly used. Special technologies are required for diagnostic materials and long-term drug release systems. Technologies of the current stage of the industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, are often used in the biomedical materials production cycle. Therefore, it can be considered that the Biomaterials 4.0 stage is getting closer, where it becomes necessary to manufacture and process biomedical materials, among others, with the use of cyber-physical systems.

The objective of this Special Issue on Recent Biomedical Materials is to provide a summary of the latest results in the development and production of modern biomedical materials used in contemporary medicine and dentistry. The scope covers general considerations concerning the protection of health and general well-being of societies as well as disease prevention demanding biomedical materials applications, as well as the design of biomedical materials and their technologies, including computer-aided design and manufacturing using CAD/CAM methods. The scope also includes the study of their structure and properties as well as surface properties, including biological research characterizing the reactions of the human organism to implantation or the introduction of various types of biomedical materials, both in the field of regenerative medicine and regenerative dentistry, as well as tissue engineering. We are interested in considerations concerning moral imperatives resulting from the cooperation of doctors and engineers in the context of providing medical aid and the use of biomedical materials in everyday diagnostic and therapeutic practice.

Studies related to metals and their alloys are expected, due to the substantive limitations resulting from the scope of the Metals journal, within which the publication of this Special Issue is planned. We are also interested incomposite materials with the participation of metals and their alloys, as well as metal layers applied to the substrates of various materials or various coatings (including ceramic and polymer coatings) applied to metal substrates, or the comparison of metal materials with ceramic or polymer materials.

We strongly encourage the wide circle of potential Authors to engage their interest in the presented topic and invite them to submit their articles to this Issue.

Prof. Dr. Leszek Adam Dobrzanski
Prof. Dr. Anna D. Dobrzańska-Danikiewicz
Dr. Lech Bolesław Dobrzański
Dr. Joanna Dobrzańska
Guest Editors

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• Biomedical materials (biomaterials)
• Metallic materials
• Coatings
• Technology
• Medicine
• Dentistry
• Structure
• Properties
• Ethics in medicine and stomatology