CHAPTER 8: Phosphate Glasses for Biophotonic Applications

With this chapter, our goal is to highlight important research topics in which biophotonics will play a crucial role in the near future. Biophotonics offers tremendous opportunities for applied and fundamental research and has been successfully used for early disease detection and for light-guided/activated therapies. However, there is still an urgent need for the development of a material platform for biophotonic applications, especially biocompatible and biodegradable materials with optimized biological, chemical, optical and mechanical properties. Phosphate glasses are clearly promising biophotonic materials and their use opens the path to the development of clinically relevant biophotonic devices for in vitro optical techniques to be used in situ and in vivo. These new phosphate glasses could be used not only for early detection of diseases but also for effective targeted therapies. They could also re-establish impaired biological functions. We expect these new materials to have a significant influence on the development of new technologies, offering huge commercial rewards worldwide.