Agradecimentos: We are very grateful to Professor Celso Aparecido Bertran - Institute of Chemistry, University of Campinas - for hosting part of this research in his laboratory. The authors acknowledge the use of the analytical instrumentation facility at Institute of Chemistry - University of Campinas. This work is fully supported by Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education - CAPES (Grant 33003017034P8) and the Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP (Grant 2010/05394-9) Ver menos

Abstract: The ternary membrane-forming system based on the silk fibroin (SF), glycerol (GLY) and sol-gel precursor of 58S bioactive glass (BG) was studied for the preparation of novel and multifunctional hybrid membranes. The morphology of membranes was observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and spectral imaging, by X-ray mapping technique, were performed in order to investigate the chemical homogeneity of elements. The results show that there is a critical limit for the concentration of GLY and BG for formation of flexible membranes and without a phase separation. XRD and FTIR data showed that the GLY and BG in the silk matrix modifies the short- and intermediate-range order resulting in changes in the silk conformation, i.e., SF molecules are gradually transformed from random coils toward more stable structures - Silk I and Silk II (ß-sheets). The solubility study showed that the hybrid membranes have an excellent chemical stability, confirming that the incorporation of inorganic species in the matrix allowed the preparation of novel well-controlled water-soluble membranes. The release profiles of Ca, P and Si confirmed ability of hybrid membranes to deliver controlled inorganic species, which in critical concentration, control the gene expression of osteoblasts and influences cell metabolism and function Ver menos