On the in Vitro Biocompatibility Testing of Bioactive Glasses

In this work, a new 3D cellular model-based on human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs)-was used for the first time to test the 45S5 Bioglass^® (45S5). Such a model, previously used to evaluate the biologic performance of two novel bioactive glasses, suggested out the regenerative potential of such materials. In fact, BM-MSCs were able both to adhere and colonize the biomaterials, as well as differentiate toward osteoblasts-even in absence of specific growth factors. Surprisingly, BM-MSCs were not able to colonize 45S5 granules (almost no adhesion and/or colonization was observed), and thus, were not capable of providing any osteogenic differentiation. Therefore, the model seems to suggest that the two novel bioactive glasses have a better biologic performance than 45S5. If this hypothesis is confirmed also by in vivo tests, the 3D model may become a predictive tool for discriminating between different potential bioactive materials by comparatively evaluating them, and preliminarily selecting the best ones in relation to their biocompatibility potential-before proceeding with further experiments in vivo. This approach could favor the reduction of costs and time of pre-clinical and clinical trials.