Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
100
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0.6
0.8
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COO
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3
11.4
Inhibition percentage of fibroblast cells onto functionalized
PMMA with various compositions.
material interactions and to enhance cell differentiation, mineralization and
bone growth. Such bioactive polymers which combine improvement of the
osteoblast cell response with properties that inhibit bacteria associated with
implant infection are the best candidates to be grafted onto metallic implant
surfaces like Ti and Ta6V alloys in order to obtain biointegrable and infection
preventing orthopaedic implants.
11.6 New approach: grafting bioactive polymers
onto titanium implants
The grafting of organic bioactive polymers to metallic surfaces is one of the
key solutions for elaborating biocompatible and 'biointegrable' orthopaedic
implant surfaces. indeed, as described above, it is amongst the numerous
strategies which have been developed to improve osteointegration of implants:
HAP coatings, physical (thermal, laser, shot blasting, etc.) and chemical
(etching) treatments. Nevertheless, even if all the strategies were developed
with the aim of enhancing protein/cell/surface interactions, none have been
demonstrated to exhibit the required long-term biological properties through
in vivo
assays and to be easily reproducible and transferable on the industrial
scale.
Recently, new techniques of surface grafting were developed to functionalize
biomaterial implants, appearing to be a more promising approach for
elaborating bioactive biomaterial surfaces. Grafting techniques have been
first developed on polymers like poly(ethylene terephtalate)
7, 11, 14
and then
applied to metallic surfaces like titanium Ti and Ta6V titanium alloy.
8, 11,
36-40
These surface functionalization techniques consist in covalent bonding
