Bioactive glass-biopolymer composites for applications in tissue engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering (TE) is a biomedical field in continuous expansion. However, there are still many challenges to be tackled. The further development of TE approaches requires interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration among various research areas with a notable contribution expected from biomaterials science. In the last couple of decades, significant advances in the development of biomaterial-based scaffolds for hard and soft tissue regeneration have been accomplished, including the manufacture of biocomposites that combine natural or synthetic polymers with bioactive glasses or glass-ceramics. These novel biomaterials present the possibility of tailoring a variety of parameters and properties such as degradation kinetics, mechanical properties, and chemical composition according to the aimed application. This chapter presents a concise update of the field of biopolymer–bioactive glass composite scaffold development for TE covering several popular processing techniques for biocomposite fabrication, namely, microsphere processing, solvent casting-particulate leaching method, electrospinning, freeze-drying, and rapid prototyping techniques, which lead to scaffolds exhibiting a variety of 3D morphologies and different pore structures.