Biomimetic materials are materials developed using inspiration from nature. This may be useful in the design of composite materials, or material structures. Natural structures have evolved many inspiring examples that have been used by man. Common examples are the honeycombe structure of the beehive, the fibre structure of wood, spider silks, nacre, bone, hedgehoq quills. Biomimetic materials in tissue engineering are materials that have been designed such that they elicit specified cellular responses mediated by interactions with scaffold-tethered peptides from extracellular matrix proteins; essentially, the incorporation of cell-binding peptides into biomaterials via chemical or physical modification. Such peptides include both native long chains of ECM proteins as well as short peptide sequences derived from intact ECM proteins. The idea is that the biomimetic material will mimic some of the roles that an extracellular matrix plays in neural tissue. In addition to promoting cellular growth and mobilization, the incorporated peptides could also mediate material degradation by specific protease enzymes or initiate cellular responses not present in a local native tissue.