EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Borate glasses have gained attention in soft tissue applications, and especially in wound healing due to their lower chemical durability compared with the silicate glasses. The high ion release profile is expected to have a positive effect on the healing process. Boron enhances vascularization during the proliferation phase, and calcium improves hemostasis at the very beginning of the healing process. In this study, 1393-B3 borate glasses doped with up to 6 mol % Ga3+ and Zn2+ therapeutic ions were prepared by the melt-quenching. The effect of the therapeutic ions on thermal, degradation, bioactivity, anti-bacterial, and cytotoxicity properties was investigated. The compositions of prepared glasses were verified by ICP-OES. The real (measured) compositions of all prepared glasses are close to their nominal compositions. Differential thermal analysis was conducted to determine the effect of therapeutic ions addition on glass transition temperature. The ion release profile from doped borate bioactive glass was investigated in PBS and DMEM media. In vitro bioactivity tests were carried out in SBF solution. The antibacterial activity of doped borate glasses was separately tested with S. aureus as Gram-positive and E. coli as Gram-negative bacteria using the broth dilution method for 4h, 8h, 1 day, and 2 days and agar disk diffusion method up to 3 days. The produced glasses showed significant inhibition effect for both S. aureus and E. coli from already the first hours of the test. The E. coli was more susceptible to the presence of Zn and Ga than S. aureus. Preliminary cytocompatibility tests of studied glasses in the cell culture with MG-63 cells were also carried out. The incorporation of Zn and Ga enhanced the cell viability compared to parent glass. The presented study shows the potential of Zn and Ga doped borate glasses in tissue engineering applications.