A New Bioactive Glass Composition for Bioceramic Scaffolds

Bioactive-glass-derived scaffolds are crucial in bone tissue engineering since they act as temporary templates for tissue regrowth, providing structural support to the cells in a resulting 3D architecture. However, many issues remain open with regard to their design. On the one hand, bioceramic scaffolds should be bioactive, highly porous and should possess adequate mechanical properties; on the other hand, attempts to improve the mechanical properties of the widely used 45S5 Bioglass (R) turn the bioactive glass itself into a glass-ceramic, with non-trivial effects on the resulting scaffold bioactivity. In this work, for the first time a new bioactive glass composition was employed to produce scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. The new glass composition can be treated at a relatively low temperature and it is characterized by a reduced tendency to crystallize compared to the 45S5 Bioglass. Moreover, the presented scaffolds are realized with a recently developed technique described here in detail. The resulting samples are highly porous and bioactive. Additionally, they possess a resistant and at the same time permeable surface similar to a shell, which ensures good manageability.