pharmaceutics Article Sustained Calcium(II)-Release to Impart Bioactivity in Hybrid Glass Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering Dzmitry Kuzmenka 1, Claudia Sewohl 1, Andreas König 2 , Tobias Flath 3, Sebastian Hahnel 2, Fritz Peter Schulze 3, Michael C. Hacker 1,4 and Michaela Schulz-Siegmund 1,* 1 Pharmaceutical Technology, Institute of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Leipzig University, 04317 Leipzig, Germany;
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[email protected] (M.C.H.) 2 Department of Prosthetic Dentistry and Dental Materials Science, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany;
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[email protected] (S.H.) 3 Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Leipzig, 04277 Leipzig, Germany; tobias.fl
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[email protected] (F.P.S.) 4 Institute of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, 40225 Duesseldorf, Germany * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 24 November 2020; Accepted: 5 December 2020; Published: 8 December 2020 Abstract: In this study, we integrated different calcium sources into sol-gel hybrid glass scaffolds with the aim of producing implants with long-lasting calcium release while maintaining mechanical strength of the implant. Calcium(II)-release was used to introduce bioactivity to the material and eventually support implant integration into a bone tissue defect. Tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) derived silica sols were cross-linked with an ethoxysilylated 4-armed macromer, pentaerythritol ethoxylate and processed into macroporous scaffolds with defined pore structure by indirect rapid prototyping. Triethyl phosphate (TEP) was shown to function as silica sol solvent.