The effect of MgO on the solubility behavior and cell proliferation in a quaternary soluble phosphate based glass system

This paper presents a systematic study of the MgO-CaO-Na(2)O-P(2)O(5) glass system, which has great potential to be used as temporary hard and soft tissue implant materials. An overall study of solubility behavior of ternary and quaternary-based phosphate glass system have been carried out in order to understand the out-leaching progress of different ions and to determine their effect on cell proliferation. Originally, soluble phosphate based glasses within the ternary glass system of Na(2)O-CaO-P(2)O(5) have been developed to create a simple baseline system. This paper, however, presents the development of this system by introducing magnesium oxide as a partial calcium oxide substitute and solubility behaviors as well as cell studies have been carried out to check the effect on magnesium ions. Glasses have been prepared via standard glass melting techniques and their solubility behavior has been tested in distilled water via simple weight loss, pH and ion measurements. The way the glasses dissolve is an inverse exponential behavior which is mirrored by the calcium ion release. Other ions show a less exponential behavior. The MTT test has been used to check preliminary in vitro studies on a human MG63 cell line and the result indicates that cell proliferation is increased for glasses with minimal CaO substitution. (C) 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.