| Abstract Scope |
Bioactive glass has several appealing characteristics as a scaffold material for bone tissue engineering. When compared to silicate bioactive glasses, new borate and borosilicate bioactive glasses have shown the ability to support faster bone formation, have controllable degradation rates, and can be doped with elements known to be beneficial for healthy bone growth. Advances in biomaterials processing have resulted in the creation of bioactive glass scaffolds with mechanical properties suitable for the substitution of loaded and non-loaded bone. Recent work has shown the ability of bioactive glass to promote angiogenesis, which is critical to neovascularization for bone regeneration and the healing of soft tissue wounds. Bioactive glass has also been shown to enhance neocartilage formation during in vitro culture of chondrocyte-seeded hydrogels, and to serve as a subchondral substrate for tissue-engineered osteochondral constructs. The performance of bioactive glass in these tissue engineering applications is discussed. |