High-throughput Study on the
Contact Guidance of Micropatterns on Medical Titanium Implants to Osteoblasts
Fuzeng Ren*, Mingyu Zhu, Haixia Ye, Ju Fang
Department of Materials Science and
Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055,
China
ABSTRACT:
The surface micro- and
nanostructure of implants plays significant role in the adhesion, proliferation
and differentiation of cells. Titanium and its alloys have been frequently used
as dental and orothopaedic implants. Therefore, it is of great importance to
investigate the effect of surface topographical micropatterns on the cell
behavior. Herein, we demonstrate a fast, cost-effective, and feasible approach
to the precise fabrication of shape- and size-controlled micropatterns on
titanium substrates using a combination of photolithography and inductively
coupled plasma-based dry etching. A titanium TopoChip containing 34
microgrooved patterns with varying geometry parameters and a flat surface as the
control was designed for a high-throughput in
vitro study of the contact guidance of osteoblasts. The correlation between
the surface pattern dimensions, cell morphological characteristics,
proliferation, and osteogenic marker expression was systematically investigated
in vitro. Furthermore, the surface
with the highest osteogenic potential in
vitro along with representative controls was evaluated in rat cranial
defect models. This study not only offers a microfabrication method that can be
extended to fabricate various shape- and size-controlled micropatterns on
titanium alloys but also provides insight into the surface structure design of
orthopedic and dental implants for enhanced bone regeneration.
Dr. Fuzeng Ren received his PhD at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011, after which he worked as a postdoctoral research associate in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for three years. He joined the Southern University of Science and Technology as an assistant professor in 2014 and was promoted to tenured associated professor in 2020. He is now the deputy department head of Materials Science and Engineering. His research mainly focused on wear of metals, metallic biomaterials and surface functional modification. He has published over 90 papers with h-index of 23, including Nat. Commun.、Angew Chem. Int. Ed.、Acta Mater.、Adv. Funct. Mater., etc , and received over 2200 citations. 4 papers were ESI highly cited. He also filed 17 patents and was awarded as Pearl River Youth Scholar. He has sponsored over 10 research projects and was the co-PI of the National Key Research and Development Program.