Description

Inspired by approaches used in pharmaceutical chemistry to design new drugs and more and more in Materials and Surface science, combinatorial approaches will allow to design biomaterials of new composition and structure aimed to fulfill new needs and to adapt to the patient's biological response.
The aim of this Research Topic is to overview the already performed research in this field and to propose new ideas and methods. Lab-on- a chip and organ-on-a chip approaches as well as the availability of high throughput bioanalytical analysis methods seem of particular promise in this field. The attribution of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Frances H. Arnold, G. P. Smith and Sir G.P. Winter for their investigations in directed molecular evolution should also boost such approaches to design living and evolving biomaterials.
Methods like phage display are already used to select peptides that can be used as antimicrobial or for biomineralization applications.

This Research Topic welcomes articles in the following fields :
-combinatorial design of new biomaterials
-combinatorial strategies in cell behaviour control and bioactive agent delivery
-combinatorial methods for development of multifunctional systems including theranostics, thin coatings and 3D functional biomaterial constructs
-Methods and techniques for in vitro/in vivo monitoring of combinatorial biomaterials
-Highthrough-put biomaterial analysis and discovery platforms