There is an ever-growing demand for implantable materials, which support bone regeneration and resorb in-vivo without any adverse effects. Among the commercially available biomaterials, bioactive glasses are quite popular, owing to their ability to bond to the bone without causing toxicity at the site of implantation. Other than glasses in the bulk form, glass fibers drawn from bioactive compositions are also interesting biomaterials for applications such as reinforcing scaffolds and biosensing.
The commercially available bioactive glasses are typically silicate glasses, which have excellent bone bonding properties, but suffer from other drawbacks. For instance, their degradation mechanism leads to remnants of the glass at the site of implantation. Furthermore, their thermal characteristics inhibit their sintering into complex shapes or fiber drawing.
Ayush Mishra developed new phosphate glass compositions, which are good substrates for cell attachment and proliferation, are completely bioresorbable, and can be readily drawn into fibers or processed into complex shapes.
“Some of these glasses also possess excellent antimicrobial properties, which is useful in preventing infections at the site of implantation. There are also new glass fibers, which showed potential in biosensing, and for use as reinforcements for scaffolds,” Ayush Mishra says.
The doctoral dissertation of MSc Ayush Mishra in the field of biomaterials and tissue engineering titled Phosphate Glasses and Fibers as an Alternative to Silicate Bioactive Glasses will be publicly examined in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at 12 o’ clock noon on Friday, 20th September 2019 in auditorium TB109 in Tietotalo, Korkeakoulunkatu 1, Tampere. . The Opponent will be Professor Mario Affatigato from Coe College, US. The Custos will be Associate Professor Jonathan Massera from Tampere University.
The dissertation is available online at http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-1225-1