Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology , Kemivägen 10 SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Nano Lett. 2014 Aug 13;14(8):4220-3. doi: 10.1021/nl501564f. Epub 2014 Jul 9.
In the field of biomedical technology, a critical aspect is the ability to control and understand the integration of an implantable device in living tissue. Despite the technical advances in the development of biomaterials, the elaborate interplay encompassing materials science and biology on the atomic level is not very well understood. Within implantology, anchoring a biomaterial device into bone tissue is termed osseointegration. In the most accepted theory, osseointegration is defined as an interfacial bonding between implant and bone; however, there is lack of experimental evidence to confirm this. Here we show that atom probe tomography can be used to study the implant-tissue interaction, allowing for three-dimensional atomic mapping of the interface region. Interestingly, our analyses demonstrated that direct contact between Ca atoms and the implanted titanium oxide surface is formed without the presence of a protein interlayer, which means that a pure inorganic interface is created, hence giving experimental support to the current theory of osseointegration. We foresee that this result will be of importance in the development of future biomaterials as well as in the design of in vitro evaluation techniques.
在生物医学技术领域，一个关键的方面是能够控制和理解可植入设备在活体组织中的整合。尽管在生物材料的开发方面取得了技术进步，但对材料科学和生物学在原子水平上的精细相互作用的理解还不是很清楚。在植入物学中，将生物材料设备固定在骨组织中被称为骨整合。在最被接受的理论中，骨整合被定义为植入物和骨之间的界面结合；然而，缺乏实验证据来证实这一点。在这里，我们展示了原子探针断层摄影术可用于研究植入物-组织相互作用，允许对界面区域进行三维原子映射。有趣的是，我们的分析表明，在没有蛋白质中间层的情况下，形成了钙原子与植入的氧化钛表面之间的直接接触，这意味着形成了纯无机界面，从而为当前的骨整合理论提供了实验支持。我们预计，这一结果将对未来生物材料的开发以及体外评估技术的设计具有重要意义。
