The traditional silicate
bioactive glasses exhibit poor thermal
processability, which inhibits fiber drawing or sintering into scaffolds.
The composition of the silicate glasses has been modified to enable
hot processing. However, the hot forming ability is generally at the
expense of bioactivity. Metaphosphate glasses, on the other hand,
possess excellent thermal processability, congruent dissolution, and
a tailorable degradation rate. However, due to the layer-by-layer
dissolution mechanism, cells do not attach to the material surface.
Furthermore, the congruent dissolution leads to a low density of OH
groups forming on the glass surface, limiting the adsorption of proteins.
It is well regarded that the initial step of protein adsorption is
critical as the cells interact with this protein layer, rather than
the biomaterial itself. In this paper, we explore the possibility
of improving protein adsorption on the surface of phosphate glasses
through a variety of surface treatments, such as washing the glass
surface in acidic (pH 5), neutral, and basic (pH 9) buffer solutions
followed or not by a treatment with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane
(APTS). The impact of these surface treatments on the surface chemistry
(contact angle, ζ-potential) and glass structure (FTIR) was
assessed. In this manuscript, we demonstrate that understanding of
the material surface chemistry enables to selectively improve the
adsorption of albumin and fibronectin (used as model proteins). Furthermore,
in this study, well-known silicate bioactive glasses (i.e., S53P4
and 13-93) were used as controls. While surface treatments clearly
improved proteins adsorption on the surface of both silicate and phosphate
glasses, it is of interest to note that protein adsorption on phosphate
glasses was drastically improved to reach similar protein grafting
ability to the silicate bioactive glasses. Overall, this study demonstrates
that the limited cell/phosphate glass biological response can easily
be overcome through deep understanding and control of the glass surface
chemistry.