Bioactive glasses as carriers for bioactive molecules and therapeutic drugs: a review

Abstract

Bioactive glasses (BG) show great promise for bone tissue engineering based on their key properties, e.g., biocompatibility, biodegradability, osteoconductivity as well as osteogenic and angiogenic potential, which make them excellent candidates for bone tissue scaffolds and bone substitute materials. Recent work has shown that dissolution products of bioactive glasses have the potential to induce angiogenesis in addition to their known effect of influencing gene expression and promoting osteoblastic differentiation. One of the most interesting features of BG is their ability to bond both to soft and hard tissues, depending on their composition. To intensify the positive impact of BG for medical applications, there are considerable research efforts on using bioactive glass based platforms as carriers for the encapsulation, delivery and controlled release of bioactive molecules and therapeutic drugs. Different types of bioactive glasses have been considered in combination with different therapeutic drugs, hormones, growth factors and peptides. Using bioactive glasses as drug delivery system combines thus the effectiveness of therapeutic drugs (or bioactive/signaling molecules) with the intrinsic advantages of this inorganic biomaterial. Considering research carried out in the last 15 years, this review presents the different chemical compositions and morphologies of bioactive glasses used as carrier for bioactive molecules and therapeutic drugs and discusses the expanding potential of BG with drug delivery capability focusing in the field of bone tissue engineering.

Computational Modeling of Silicate Glasses: A Quantitative Structure-Property Relationship Perspective

“…To this goal the correct understanding of the glass structure-property relationships is mandatory, since this is a prerequisite for improving specific properties and achieve greater focus on end-user application requirements, designing glass compositions for new applications, developing environmentally friendly processes and product, reducing development costs and speed time to market [1][2][3].…”

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“…biocompatibility, biodegradability, osteo-conductivity as well as osteogenic and angiogenic potential, which make them excellent candidates for bone tissue scaffolds and bone substitute materials. One of the most interesting features of BG is their ability to bond both to soft and hard tissues, depending on their composition 81 .…”

Destructive and Non-Destructive Properties of Cobalt Oxide Substituted 1393 Bioactive Glass

“…These new glasses are highly beneficial as they help in the process of osteogenesis and angiogenesis and act as an anti-bacterial agent in chemical applications of engineered bone constructs. [18][19][20][21][22] They are of importance as they can be used for the limited delivery of certain ions which control particular cell functions 23 , the carrier of homeostatic agents 24 and therapeutic drugs 25 , hyperthermia treatment of cancer 26 and also for soft tissue applications like nerve generation. 27 1393 bioactive glasses tolerate strong bonding to hard and soft tissue and have been shown to endorse osteogenesis via the activation of several relevant genes.…”