Polymers Used for Bone Reconstruction – Evaluation of Chosen Polymeric Materials for in Vitro Culture of Osteoblasts

Abstract

The need to reconstruct tissues damaged as a result of trauma, congenital defects or other pathologies, or of those removed by resection of tumorous lumps, continues to be an emergent problem in surgery. Progress in the sphere of material engineering and the biological sciences has meant that more and more new compounds are put forward as materials for implants. Plastics provide an alternative to the allogenic grafts prepared in tissue banks and also to autogenic grafts, i.e. implants of the patient's own tissue taken from another site in he body. This material must be satisfactorily tolerated by the tissue of the recipient.

Microporous Titanium-Based Materials Coated by Biocompatible Thin Films

“…Cells' material attachability depends on proteins' substrate adhesion [29-35, 37-39, 42, 45]. An excessively hydrophilic and hydrophobic character of the surface with the wetting angle of over 80 or below 15° [46] is sometimes unfavourable for the growth of cells, although surface hydrophobicity may, in the initial phase, support cells' adhesion, when hydrophilicity may support their division and multiplication [47]. In general, cells are preferentially attaching, dividing and growing on hydrophilic surfaces of a material, whilst their ability of adhesion to a substrate material is diminishing on hydrophobic surfaces [38,39,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53].…”

“…Other metallic materials can also be utilised for this purpose, for example, polymer materials [40,81,[146][147][148][149][150][151][152][153] or polymer matrix composite materials with a fraction of metals or ceramic particles [81,150]. Unlike metals and their alloys, polymer materials can be not only biocompatible, but also biodegradable and bioresorbable [29,46,154,155], and also in some cases osteoinductive [156] and can reduce thrombogenic properties of the material [40]. Another concept relates, however, to covering the surface of metallic materials with other materials, also as a result of working an internal surface of pores [125,157].…”