BACKGROUND: The source of autologous bone is limited, and there are the risk of disease transmission and immune rejection of allogeneic bone. As a result, artificial bone is used more and more widely in the treatment of bone defects. Inorganic nonmetal artificial bone has been pa id more attention due to its good biological activity. OBJECTIVE: To review the research progress of inorganic nonmetallic artificial bone in vivo to repair bone defects in recent years, and look forward to the development direction of this kind of materials. METHODS: The first author used computer to search articles on bone repair materials in PubMed (2015- 2020), CNKI (2013- 2020). The keywords were "bone repair materials, bioactive ceramics, bone cement, bone defect, artificial bone" in Chinese and English. Totally 5 420 articles were retrieved, and the articles related to the bioactive ceramics and bone cement were eventually included. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 46 articles were reviewed. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At present, inorganic nonmetallic artificial bone materials include bioactive ceramics and bone cement with good osteoconductivity, osteoinductivity and biological activity. However, these materials have poor mechanical properties and poor biodegradability when used alone. By mixing different bioactive materials to simulate natural bone components, exploring processing techniques to optimize the material microstructure, and modifying the surface to improve osteogenic activity, composite artificial bones with better mechanical properties, better degradation rates, and excellent biocompatibility can be prepared. The characteristics of different parts of the bone are quite different, and the performance requirements of the materials a re different, so a large number of in vivo studies are still needed to evaluate the effect of composite artificial bone on the treatment of different parts of bone defects.