Modification of heat-induced whey protein isolate hydrogel with highly bioactive glass particles results in promising biomaterial for bone tissue engineering

Abstract This study deals with the design and comprehensive evaluation of novel hydrogels based on whey protein isolate (WPI) for tissue regeneration. So far, WPI has been considered mainly as a food industry by-product and there are very few reports on the application of WPI in tissue engineering (TE). In this work, WPI-based hydrogels were modified with bioactive glass (BG), which is commonly used as a bone substitute material. Ready-to-use, sterile hydrogels were produced by a simple technique, namely heat-induced gelation. Two different concentrations (10 and 20 % w/w) of sol-gel-derived BG particles of two different sizes (2.5 and