Fibroblastic response and surface characterization of O ₂ -plasma-treated thermoplastic polyetherurethane

Abstract

Injection-molded samples of thermoplastic polyetherurethane (TPU) were treated with low-temperature oxygen plasma for different processing times in order to enhance cellular attachment for a gastric implant. Its effects were investigated by contact angle measurement, surface topography, cytotoxicity and cell colonization tests. No significant changes were found in the surface roughness of plasma treatment with plasma treatment time of less than 5 min. Longer treatment showed significantly higher surface roughness. It seems that there was a link between the changes in contact angle and enhanced cell growth on the treated surface, although only for the range up to plasma treatment times of 3 min. Prolonged treatment times did not cause any major changes in the water contact angle, but strongly improved the number of growing cells on the surface. Plasma treatment for 3-7 min led to a twofold increase in the number of cells compared to untreated samples and did not significantly alter the WST-1 nor worsened the lactate dehydrogenase activity compared to the control. Thus, it appears that O(2) plasma treatment is a suitable surface modification method for a gastric implant made of TPU in order to improve surface cell attachment where 3-7 min is the recommended treatment time.

Surface modification by plasma etching impairs early vascularization and tissue incorporation of porous polyethylene (Medpor®) implants

“…During the last decades, various techniques of surface treatment, such as the herein applied plasma etching, have been studied in the field of life sciences with the primary aim to improve the biological response to implanted biomaterials. [25][26][27][28] However, dependent on the applied technique and the biomaterial used for modification the resulting surface characteristics may significantly differ from each other. Moreover, there is not a clear correlation between individual surface properties and cellular reactions, because each cell type may behave differently on a modified surface.…”

Enhanced cell growth using non-woven scaffolds of multilobal fibres

“…In addition to surface topography, the hydrophilicity of polymers influences cell attachment. 40,41 Fibroblasts have been shown to attach optimally on the hydrophilic surface with a water contact angle between 50-60 . 42,43 Figure 4a demonstrated that fibroblasts preferred to be cultured on nylon 6,6 scaffolds over PET scaffolds, irrespective of whether the fibres were round or multilobal.…”

Vascularization Strategies for Porous Polyethylene Implants

“…The increase of the surface roughness and, consequently, the hydrophilicity by means of plasma etching is a widely used method to improve the biological response to implanted biomaterials. 40,41 Therefore, it was analyzed whether this approach also enhances the vascularization and incorporation of pPE implanted into mouse dorsal skinfold chambers. 30 However, the angiogenic host tissue response to plasma-etched pPE was delayed and less pronounced than that to untreated controls.…”