Helical Rosette Nanotubes as a Potentially More Effective Orthopaedic Implant Material
- PDF / 90,634 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 15 Downloads / 198 Views
AA1.3.1
Helical Rosette Nanotubes as a Potentially More Effective Orthopaedic Implant Material Ai Lin Chun1, Hicham Fenniri2, and Thomas J. Webster1 Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and School of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 2 National Institute for Nanotechnology, National Research Council and the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 1
ABSTRACT Organic nanotubes called helical rosette nanotubes (HRN) have been synthesized in this study for bone tissue engineering applications. They possess intriguing properties for various bionanotechnology applications since they can be designed to mimic the nanostructured constituent components in bone such as collagen fibers and hydroxyapatite (Ca5(PO4)3(OH)) which bone cells are naturally accustomed to interacting with. This is in contrast to currently used orthopaedic materials such as titanium which do not possess desirable nanometer surface roughness. The objective of this in vitro study was to determine bone-forming cell (osteoblasts) interactions on titanium coated with HRNs. Results of this study showed for the first time increased osteoblast adhesion on titanium coated with HRNs compared to those not coated with HRNs. In this manner, this study provided evidence that HRNs should be further considered for orthopaedic applications.
INTRODUCTION A class of organic nanotubes called helical rosette nanotubes (HRN) have been synthesized [14]. They possess properties suited for various nanotechnology applications such as implant materials, molecular electronic or photonic devices and, drug delivery systems [2, 4]. These HRN are assembled from a single bicyclic block with a Guanine-Cytosine (GC) motif designed to have hydrogen-bond donor-donor-acceptor array on one side and complementary acceptordonor array on the other side (Fig 1a). These building blocks assemble through H-bonds to form the rosette, which then stack to form a nanotube with a hollow core 11 Å across and up to several micrometers long (Fig 1b) [2]. The tube structure is maintained by electrostatic, hydrophobic and stacking interactions. A variety of functional groups suited for different applications can be attached to these building blocks. In addition, the entropic nature of the assembly process, similar to entropy-driven processes found in nature (such as assembly of type I collagen fibrils and polymerization of tobacco mosaic virus coat protein), offers opportunities for supramolecular engineering of scaffolds with predefined chemical and physical properties for biomedical applications. With such flexibility and design, it is thought that these HRN are also suited for orthopaedic implants since one can attach growth factors and/or specific bone recognition peptide sequences that will preferentially attract bone cell adhesion. Moreover, HRN possess biologically-inspired nanometer features that resemble naturallyoccurring nanostructured constituent components in bone such as collagen fibers and hydroxyapatite (Ca5(PO4)3(OH)) that bone cells are accustomed to i
Data Loading...
