Bioactive glasses for soft tissue engineering applications

Abstract

In the last few years the usage of bioactive glasses as scaffolds for soft tissue engineering has been investigated more thoroughly. The reason for the boost in interest are the attractive properties bioactive glasses offer including bioactivity as well as antibacterial, angiogenic and hemostatic properties. So far, most research efforts have focussed on applications for repairing skin and nerve tissue although there have been interesting developments in other fields including lung and intestines, which could potentially benefit a large group of patients but more studies are required. Three comprehensive reviews on this topic have been published recently, so this chapter will mainly focus on the latest relevant published research. There are a great number of patents registered for the use of bioactive glass for hard tissue engineering, however, recently patents detailing the use of bioactive glass for soft tissue engineering applications have been filed, which open the way to market bioactive glasses for the restoration of soft tissues. The angiogenic effect of bioactive glasses is of great interest for tissue engineering applications in general and in particular for soft tissue engineering, hence the third part of this chapter will detail the latest research on the angiogenic properties of bioactive glasses.