Therapeutic and regenerative glass based biomaterials

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.