Current prospects of additive manufacturing and titanium surface nanotopography on bone formation

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging technique for manufacturing titanium implants, with the advantage of allowing customization of designs, topographies and surfaces. Being osseointegration essential to evaluate the success of dental implant modifications and bone formation closely related to adhesion forces and electrostatic charge interactions between cells and the surface of Ti-based materials, the objective of the present study will be to evaluate the effect of different manufacturing methods (conventional machining and additive manufacturing), surface treatments (polished and nanotopographic) on the physical-chemical properties of Ti-6Al-4V alloy and correlate them with the cellular behavior of human osteoblasts. The physicochemical properties will be evaluated by atomic force microscopy (AFM), free surface energy and zeta potential. The pre-osteoblastic cell line MC3T3-E1 will be used to assess cell proliferation, adhesion and morphology, in addition to alkaline phosphatase activity and expression of osteogenic genes by PCR real-time. The results obtained will be subjected to parametric or non-parametric tests according to the data distribution (±=0.05). (AU)