The
anticoagulation treatment of cardiovascular patients, which
is mandatory after implantation of heart valves or stents, has significantly
adverse effects on life quality. This treatment can be reduced or
even circumvented by developing novel antithrombogenic surfaces of
blood-contacting implants. Thus, we aim to discover materials exhibiting
outstanding hemocompatibility compared to other available synthetic
materials. We present promising surficial characteristics of single
crystalline alumina in terms of platelet activation inhibition. In
order to elucidate the relation between its crystallographic properties
including the plane orientation and blood cell behavior, we examined
endothelialization, cytocompatibility, and platelet activation at
the blood-alumina interfaces in a controlled experimental setup. We
observed that the cell response is highly sensitive to the plane orientation
and differs significantly for (0001) and (11–20) planes of
Al2O3. Our results reveal for the first time
the dependence of platelet activation on crystallographic orientation,
which is assumed to be a critical condition controlling the thrombogenicity.
Additionally, we used an endothelial cell monolayer as an internal
control since endothelial cells have an impact on vessel integrity
and implant acceptance. We successfully demonstrate that Al2O3(11–20) exhibits enhanced hemocompatibility in
contrast to Al2O3(0001) and is comparable to
the physiological endothelial monolayer in vitro.