Thanks to their high biocompatibility and bioactivity, bioactive glasses are very promising materials for soft and hard tissue repair and engineering. Because bioactivity and specific surface area intrinsically linked, the last decade has seen a focus on the development of highly porous and/or nano-sized materials. This review emphasizes the synthesis of bioactive glass nanoparticles and materials design strategies. The first part comprehensively covers mainly soft chemistry processes, which aim to obtain dispersible and monodispersed nanoparticles. The second part discusses the use of bioactive glass nanoparticles for medical applications, highlighting the design of materials. Mesoporous nanoparticles for drug delivery, injectable systems and scaffolds consisting of bioactive glass nanoparticles dispersed in a polymer, implant coatings and particle dispersions will be presented.

Biphasic Calcium Phosphates (BCP) are bioceramics composed of hydroxyapatite (HAp, Ca(PO)(OH)) and beta-Tricalium Phosphate (β-TCP, Ca(PO)). Because their chemical and mineral composition closely resembles that of the mineral component of bone, they are potentially interesting candidates for bone repair surgery. Doping can advantageously be used to improve their biological behaviors; however, it is important to describe the doping mechanism of BCP thoroughly in order to fully appraise the benefit of the doping process. The present paper scrutinizes in detail the incorporation of copper cation in order to correctly interpret the behavior of the Cu-doped bioceramic in biological fluid. The understanding of the copper doping mechanism, related to doping mechanism of others 3d-metal cations, makes it possible to explain the rates and kinetic of release of the dopant in biological medium. Finally, the knowledge of the behavior of the copper doped ceramic in biological environment allowed the tuning of its cytotoxicity properties. The present study resulted on pre-treated ceramic disks which have been evaluated as promising biocompatible ceramic for bone substitute and/or prosthesis coating: good adherence of bone marrow cells with good cell viability.