Therapeutic and regenerative glass based biomaterials

达尔豪斯大学的治疗和再生玻璃生物材料项目将发现和研究具有广泛应用潜力的下一代生物材料。目前，关于玻璃基生物材料的两个关键领域的科学文献缺乏。首先，对骨科玻璃材料的有意义的研究主要局限于对含磷酸盐/钠的玻璃的评估，对骨质疏松症等代谢性骨病患者的健康组织再生的意义有限。这种方法限制了发现用于骨科手术的潜在有益材料的潜力。其次，目前玻璃基生物材料的应用主要局限于骨骼的应用。同样，这限制了开发可能在软组织中应用的新型玻璃基材料解决方案的潜力。这项计划将有助于纠正这种平衡。该计划将研究玻璃的新成分，旨在触发硬组织和软组织内的特定反应。此外，这些材料的设计将考虑到正常和极端的生理条件，如骨质疏松症和癌症。玻璃基生物材料的新应用需要精确控制其组成和结构，以介导特定的宿主反应。因此，研究计划将着重强调对玻璃结构作为组成功能的研究。基于这一基础知识，研究小组将研究玻璃基生物材料的组成-结构-性质关系，这将在体内驱动有益的宿主反应。该项目的首要目标是为发现新的生物材料提供基础，这些材料可以转化或开发成真正的临床解决方案。

The therapeutic and regenerative glass based biomaterials programme at Dalhousie University will discover and examine next generation biomaterials with potential for a wide range of applications. Presently, the scientific literature is deficient in two key areas with respect to glass based biomaterials. The first is that meaningful investigations into glass materials for Orthopaedics has been principally limited to the evaluation of phosphate /sodium containing glasses, where limited significance is given to regeneration of healthy tissues in patients suffering from metabolic bone diseases like osteoporosis. Such an approach limits the potential for discovery of potentially beneficial materials for use in orthopaedic surgery. Secondly, current applications for glass based biomaterials have been predominantly limited to applications in the skeleton. Again, this limits the potential to develop novel glass based material solutions which may have applications in soft tissues. This programme will help redress the balance. This programme will investigate new compositions of glasses that are designed to trigger specific responses within hard and soft tissues. Furthermore these materials will be designed with normal and extreme physiological conditions such as osteoporosis and cancer in mind. Novel applications for glass based biomaterials require exacting control of the composition and structure in order to mediate specific host responses. Consequently, the research programme will heavily emphasize research into glass structure as a function of composition. From this base of knowledge the research team will investigate the composition-structure-property relationships in glass based biomaterials which will drive beneficial host responses in vivo. The overriding goal of this project is to provide a basis for the discovery of new biomaterials which can be translated or developed into real clinical solutions.