Since the invention of bioactive glass 50 years ago, it has become a versatile material used in healthcare in a variety of applications and compositions. Bioactive glass has shown superior capabilities of drug delivery compared to traditional carriers. For example, time-released medications are less likely to reach toxic levels, while delivering a specific, therapeutic dose to a localized area. The objective of this paper is to investigate the properties and effectiveness of mesoporous bioglass (MBG) as a drug delivery carrier. A literature review of various polymer coated 45S5 Bioglass® loaded with vancomycin was analyzed to determine their drug release response. Since MBG continues to be a preferred carrier with numerous combinations; size, coating, doped with ions, medications, and other physical conditions, there is a need to understand more fully their effectiveness. For a given loading efficiency of 5-15% the burst release % for day 1 remained 15-30% for given surface area, pore volume and pore size of 3.5 to 5 nm. The mechanical properties summarized in this paper are compared with the drug release kinetics. In general, for a given fracture toughness and compressive strength, the ratio of Young’s modulus to bending strength around 250 determined poor apatite mineralization resulting in slow release. As this ratio increased the apatite mineralization and dissolution rate increased. Doping MBG with ions enhanced the drug efficacy to treat a particular condition, for example, silver. Polymer coated MBG exhibited slower dissolution rate than uncoated MBG. Dissolution time increased with the drug loading rate, drying time of the coating, multi-layer coats of drug and polymer for the drug studied in this paper to more than 50%.

The drug dissolution behavior of poorly soluble medication such as doxorubicin has been conducted in this paper. Since the drug was fixed, different carriers used to deliver it and their dissolutions kinetics compiled from literature evaluated in this paper. Even though targeting of drugs is very important in drug delivery, it is not within the scope of this paper. However, functionalization of the carrier may provide this benefit, those constructs are included for comparison in terms of hybrid constructs. Dendrimer, micelles and hybrid constructs used in the delivery of doxorubicin compared in this paper with respect to carrier size and drug loading. Assuming that the dissolution follows a slow release, 40-50% of the drug in the phase I representing the sudden or the burst release, followed by a steady release of 50-60% of the drug in phase II, not all the carriers and their sizes exhibited this behavior. Carriers and hybrid constructs 38nm size were more effective where phase I and II was observed, however, as the size decreased to 34 nm or increased, dissolution kinetics with minimal release occurred meaning the carriers were too big to penetrate the vasculature permeability. Nano-carriers, dendrimers, micelle, hybrid dendrimers, and hybrid micelle were found to be effective with the carrier manufacturing, generation, polymer, molecular weight of the carrier and other parameters. The release rate of doxorubicin was found to be effective with dendrimers together with hybrid dendrimer exhibiting a bilinear kinetics. Micelles 20nm were more effective representing 60% of release in 10 hours followed by additional 25% in 35 hours exhibiting a bilinear behavior. Size greater than 20nm resulted in slow dissolution reaching less than 10 to 40% of drug. Several drugs exhibited multiple slopes in their dissolution kinetics when micelle was used. The therapeutic efficacy of hybrid micelle was superior to other nano-carriers.