SURFACE TREATMENTS AND PRE-CALCIFICATION ROUTES TO ENHANCE CELL ADHESION AND PROLIFERATION

摘要

When coated with a bone-like apatite layer, biodegradable polymers have a great potential to be used as bone-repairing materials, since they can exhibit not only mechanical properties analogous to the natural bone but also a bioactive character. Presently available methods to produce such type of coatings are usually difficult to control on what concerns to the calcium-phosphate (Ca-P) layer composition, resorbability, and ability to generate strong bonds with substrates. On the other hand the presently available methodologies are not so effective on coat ng 3D architectures for being used as tissue engineering scaffolds. These are some cha lenges addressed in our work. In that perspective, our research group is developing several biomimetic coating methodologies, inspired in natural physiological processes, to coat the surface of starch based biodegradable polymers with tailored apatite layers that will be able to bond to living bone. The different biomimetic approaches that are being proposed go from adaptations of the traditional biomimetic methodology (performed for untreated and surface modified materials using chemical and physical means to innovative sodium silicate gel treatments or a novel autocatalytic methodology. To understand the mechanisms of apatite formation, particularly in the earlier stage of nucleation, the atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been used as an extremely powerful tool, since it allows for in-situ studies of the surface, simulating the chemical environments founded in-vivo.