Abstract
Throughout her impressive scientific career, Prof. María Vallet-Regí opened various research lines aimed at designing new bioceramics, including mesoporous bioactive glasses for bone tissue engineering applications. These bioactive glasses can be considered a spin-off of silica mesoporous materials because they are designed with a similar technical approach. Mesoporous glasses in addition to SiO2 contain significant amounts of other oxides, particularly CaO and P2O5 and therefore, they exhibit quite different properties and clinical applications than mesoporous silica compounds. Both materials exhibit ordered mesoporous structures with a very narrow pore size distribution that are achieved by using surfactants during their synthesis. The characteristics of mesoporous glasses made them suitable to be enriched with various osteogenic agents, namely inorganic ions and biopeptides as well as mesenchymal cells. In the present review, we summarize the evolution of mesoporous bioactive glasses research for bone repair, with a special highlight on the impact of Prof. María Vallet-Regí´s contribution to the field.
Highlights
Rationale and ObjectivesWriting a review article in tribute to María Vallet-Regís’s scientific career is a colossal task
In the context of the Special Issue of Pharmaceutics in tribute to María Vallet-Regís’s scientific career since she proposed the application of silica-based materials in the biomedical field, the present review is devoted to mesoporous bioactive glasses (MBGs). The latter is a category of bioceramics that, as will be explained, can be considered intermediate between traditional bioactive glasses—obtained by quenching of a melt or by the sol-gel method—and silica mesoporous materials
The interest in developing MBG as implant scaffolds comes from the need to provide a suitable microenvironment to favor bone regeneration, which is achieved by gradual removal of the scaffold and its replacement by new bone tissue at the implant site [27]
Summary
Writing a review article in tribute to María Vallet-Regís’s scientific career is a colossal task. From the beginning of her excellent scientific career, her research interest has been consistently on the frontier of knowledge, opening new research lines followed by many other colleagues Her training as a solid-state chemist led her to evolve from an initial research interest in non-structural materials such as pigments, magnets and high-temperature superconductors, to focus on materials for biomedical applications in the last few years. In the context of the Special Issue of Pharmaceutics in tribute to María Vallet-Regís’s scientific career since she proposed the application of silica-based materials in the biomedical field, the present review is devoted to mesoporous bioactive glasses (MBGs). To add context to these contributions, outstanding references by other authors on the same topic were included
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