Abstract

Bioactive glasses are a kind of inorganic nonmetallic biomaterials with excellent biocompatibility and ability for tissue regenerative and restoration.In recent years，much attention has been paid of bioactive glass in the field of biomedical material and clinical medicine，due to its excellent clinical effects.It could chemically bond with both bone tissue and soft tissue，and promote tissue regeneration and repair.After decades of development，several methods have been used to prepare bioactive glasses，including melt method，sol-gel method，sol-gel combined with organic template method.The application of bioactive glasses also extends from the traditional bone repair to the restoration of teeth，skin and other tissues.In the field of bone regeneration，based on its unique gene activation and characteristics of promoting new bone formation，bioactive glasses have been used to repair large bone defects and bone augmentations.For the skin wound healling，bioactive glasses show many excellent performances，such as reducing local inflammation，upregulation of vascularized factors，stimulating vascular regeneration，enhancing fibroblast activity and accelerating the healing of skin wounds.In dental repair aspect，bioactive glass has been found to induce the migration，proliferation and differentiation of pulp stem cells.It is also found that bioactive glass has the ability to induce pulp tissue to form pulp dentin complex structure.Moreover，the product development of dentin desensitizing agent and pulp capping agent have also made important progress due to the excellent biomineralization performance of bioactive glass.This chapter mainly introduces the general situation of bioactive glasses and its application progress in the regenerative repair fields of bone，teeth and skin.