Abstract:
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This project was carried out in the field of biomaterials, in the section regenerative therapies and precisely aimed at tissue engineering.
Bone restoration and regeneration are a major importance in the tissue engineering field. Basically, an implant such as scaffolds for bone regeneration has to stimulate osteogenesis and angiogenesis, apart from being bioresorbable as well. Nevertheless, biomaterials for osteogenesis and angiogenesis should be considered not only as a template for cell growth, but also as a delivery agent. Indeed, previous and current studies aimed in this direction, promotes the key role of calcium in blood vessel formation.
The interesting achievement is to obtain nanostructured materials by electrospinning with embedded calcium and phosphate compounds, which shall deliver at an appropriate rate. In our case, the study was directed to bioactive glass nanoparticles, whose purpose is to be incorporated in polymeric fibers. In order to reach desired compositions, the particles were synthesized by the sol-gel process. A first glass synthesis was performed to acquire the “G5”, whose composition is known to be as: 44.5% P2O5, 44.5% CaO, Na2O 6% 5% TiO2. However, the main task of this project was to produce new bioactive glass nanoparticles using different precursors: especially calcium propionate and phytic acid to obtain ternary glass particles with a desired composition of 47.5% P2O5, 47.5% CaO, 5% TiO2. Indeed, the challenging nature of the study was to use precursors whose byproducts appear to be biocompatible and biodegradable. The current precursors used, for the fabrication of the regular “G5” particles, contain whether ethanol or 2-methoxyethanol, known to be cytotoxic once released in the body. New precursors whose byproducts after release can be eliminated by the body would an important progress.
The difficulty in the control of sol-gel parameters according to the difference of precursors have shown quite broad range of composition which have been compared to the defined G5 glass. Further studies have to be completed in order to define an effective protocol capable of producing these nanoparticles with better control in terms of compositions and morphology, because it is precisely the first features which affect the additional properties of our material, such as pH, calcium release and of course cell proliferation. |