## 1 Introduction  
Bioactive glass (BG) has emerged as a prominent biomaterial, gaining a lot of attention in this field due to its favourable characteristics including versatility, bioactivity, ease of synthesis, cost-effectiveness, and application in regenerative medicine and drug delivery [1]. BG can be synthesized through melt-quenching, the sol-gel process [2], flame synthesis [3], and microwave-assisted synthesis [4, 5]. Each method results in a BG with unique properties that can be used for different applications. Sol-gel BG has gained a lot of interest due to its higher porosity, increased surface area, and highly customizable compositions compared to melt-quench BG [4]. This leads to improved bioactivity as the increased surface area allows for more rapid ion exchange with biological fluids and the formation of an apatite-like layer on its surface [6, 7]. Specifically, the tertiary system of SiO\({}_{2}\)-CaO-P\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{5}\) is one of the most widely utilized and studied BG systems due to its versatility and adaptability in various biomedical applications [8]. This versatility can be attributed to the glass composition, which combines network formers, like SiO\({}_{2}\) and P\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{5}\), and establishes the silicate-phosphate structure with network modifiers, such as CaO, which enhance both the bioactivity and mechanical properties [9,10]. Typically, the synthesis of BG involves high thermal treatment to remove organics and nitrates [8]. However, recent studies have reported the successful synthesis of bioactive glass without the need for thermal treatment [11,12]. This expands the uses and applications of bioactive glass to include preloaded drugs. This study will investigate the synthesis of BG preloaded with antibiotics and evaluate its sustained drug delivery potential for treating infections, particularly biofilm-associated infections that develop on prosthetics following joint replacement surgeries. Biofilms are bacterial colonies that are protected by a self-produced polymeric matrix that can invade inert or living surfaces [13]. These colonies require prolonged antimicrobial exposure above the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). A drug delivery system that aims to treat these infections needs to load enough antibiotics to deliver them over a period of at least a month with minimal burst release to not cause any toxicities locally at the infection site [13]. BG can be designed to load antibiotics during synthesis to deliver them over an extended period as the matrix gradually degrades, making them ideal for the treatment of biofilm and biofilm-related infections. Vancomycin, a glycopeptide antibiotic, is often the antimicrobial of choice when treating these biofilm infections as it has proven to be effective in penetrating the biofilm matrix. Vancomycin acts by binding to cell precursors that are essential for the integrity of cell wall development, which is effective in killing bacterial cells [14]. The choice of antibiotic that surgeons make when trying to treat biofilms is due to the antibiotic's familiarity and common use, the number of pathogens it can attack, and its successful release from bone cement [15]. Vancomycin incorporation into BG has traditionally been achieved through post-synthesis depletion methods, with varying degrees of success. This approach involves immersing BG particles in drug solutions of different concentrations, with loading efficiency determined by UV-Vis spectroscopy measurements before and after immersion. Previous studies have demonstrated a wide range of loading efficiencies, heavily influenced by BG composition, synthesis methods, and templating techniques. Highly porous mesoporous bioactive glasses (MBGs) have shown antibiotic loading efficiencies ranging from 50 to 90%, with release durations spanning from a few hours to over 25 days [13]. [PERSON] et al. reported loading efficiencies of approximately 40% for Cettriaxone and sulbactam sodium in MBGs [16], while [PERSON] et al. achieved 36-48% loading efficiency for gentamicin [17].