Bioactive Glass Innovations Through Academia-Industry Collaboration

Since the discovery of 45S5 bioactive glass by Hench in 1969, numerous studies have been conducted on the use of bioactive glasses for the repair of hard and soft tissues. However, limited progress has been achieved in the commercialization of bioactive glass as medical products, with the most successful ones being 45S5-based Perioglas®, Novabone®, and NovaMin®. This indicates that a gap exists between academic research and industrial scale-up. Our work attempts to provide a preliminary study on the two well-known bioactive glasses, 45S5 and 13-93, to evaluate their suitability for mass production in an industrial platform. Glass properties including strain, annealing, and softening points, thermal expansion, density, and liquidus temperature are characterized. Our results show that both glasses have a substantially lower liquidus viscosity than soda lime silicate (SLS) glass, suggesting that melting and forming them in an industrial continuous-unit melting system could be challenging. Innovations in bioactive glass compositions by delving into literature, referencing relevant phase diagrams, conducting design of experiments (DOE), and utilizing modeling tools are needed. Furthermore, joint research between academia and industry on the development of new forming techniques is critical to meet the increasing demand for bioactive glass in a variety of sizes and shapes