Volume 10 Number 2 2026
Marine Collagen–Hydroxyapatite Nanocomposites from Fish Processing Waste for Dental Tissue Engineering: A Review of Extraction, Structure, Fabrication, and Preclinical Performance
Nurhuda Mohamad Ansor 1*, Muhammad Asif 2, Hafiza Sidra Yaseen 3
Integrative Biomedical Research 10 (2) 1-8 https://doi.org/10.25163/biomedical.10211000
Submitted: 25 June 2026 Revised: 11 August 2026 Accepted: 21 August 2026 Published: 23 August 2026
Losing alveolar bone, periodontal attachment or dentin–pulp tissue beyond a critical size is still one of the harder problems in reconstructive dentistry, and the grafts clinicians rely on each carry a cost. Autografts are limited and painful to harvest; bovine and porcine xenografts raise concerns about zoonotic transmission, batch variability and cultural or religious acceptability; and synthetic ceramics often lack the biological cues that cells recognise. At the same time, fish processing discards an estimated 20–30 million tonnes of skins, scales and bones each year. This review asks, quite simply, whether those discarded side-streams can be turned into something clinically useful. We examined literature on recovering type I collagen and biogenic nano-hydroxyapatite from fish waste and combining them into biomimetic nanocomposites for dental and craniofacial regeneration. Pepsin-assisted extraction generally improved collagen yields over simple acid extraction, although the low denaturation temperatures of marine collagen, particularly from cold-water species, remain a real constraint. Fish-derived apatite was consistently non-stoichiometric (Ca/P ≈ 1.30–1.74) and carried Mg²?, Sr²?, CO3²? and F? substitutions that appear to favour osteogenesis. Carbodiimide crosslinking raised the compressive modulus of collagen–apatite scaffolds from below 0.1 MPa to roughly 9 MPa. In rodent calvarial and tibial defect models, these composites supported bone bridging approaching that of a commercial xenograft, with mild inflammation. Even so, the evidence is almost entirely preclinical and drawn from small animals. Raw-material heterogeneity, sterilisation, crosslinker safety and GMP-grade manufacture must be resolved before fish-derived nanocomposites can be considered credible alternatives in clinical dentistry.
Keywords: marine collagen; biogenic hydroxyapatite; fish processing waste; dental tissue engineering; periodontal regeneration; circular bioeconomy; nanocomposite scaffolds
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