Papers by Author: Xing Dong Zhang

Abstract: It is very necessary to develop a real biomimetic compound coating of CaP with organic component and investigate quantitatively the effects of different bovine serum albumin (BSA) concentration on the crystallite properties of the coprecipitated CaP layer. Bioactivated Ti was immersed in Ca-P solution with different BSA contents to obtain different biomimetic coating. The coatings were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). With the increase of BSA, the crystals on the coating grew more slowly but packed more closely. The preferential crystallographic direction of 002 of hydroxyapatite became less distinguishable and the crystallinity of the deposited hydroxyapatite decreased gradually. The crystallite sizes reduced with the addition of BSA proteins. Accordingly, when a certain content of BSA protein was added to the Ca-P solution, Ti surface would form a real biomimetic coating with the crystal size and crystallinity similar to the natural bone.

Abstract: Plasma-sprayed hydroxyapatite coating on metal substrate was prepared. Two kind of post-treatment methods were been applied to the coating, treatment in air at 650°C for 30 min and treatment in water vapor at 125°C with a pressure of 0.15MPa for 6 hours. XRD showed that the HA nanocrystals increased after water vapor treatment. The interfacial tensile bond strength between HA and substrate was 45.0±1.82MPa, 39.1±1.27MPa and 30.3±1.61MPa for as-received coatings, water vapor treated coatings and heated in air coatings, respectively. 3 months after implantation in dogs limbs, the push-out strength between implants and bone was 11.27±2.71MPa, 11.63±3.11MPa, 23.92± 2.01MPa and 18.8± 1.82MPa for pure Ti implants, as-received coating implants, water vapor treated implants and heated in air implants, respectively. The results showed that the post-water vapor treated HA coating have better mechanical behavior in vitro and in vivo

Abstract: The objective of this study was to develop an efficient method for the production of bioactive bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2). A recombinant plasmid encoding mature human BMP-2 was transferred and expressed at a high level in E.coli. Most of the aimed proteins existed in inclusion bodies. The non-active recombinant human BMP-2 (rhBMP-2) monomer in inclusion bodies was refolded and simultaneously purified using hydroxyapatite (HA) chromatography. After oxidization of the monomer, the rhBMP-2 dimmer showed biological activity by the induction of alkaline phosphate activity in C2C12 cells. The refolding yield was about 30% and the purity was about 90% just by one chromatography process.

Abstract: It is important to obtain mechanical coupling between dental implants and bone, because the lack of mechanical coupling may cause bone loss around implants. In this research, a new cylindrical dental implant composed of three parts was designed to offer favored mechanical environment for the bone. A special gap structure changed the means of the stress transmission and decreased the stress in the cortical bone around the neck of the implant. Through finite element analysis (FEA) of stress distribution in bone around implant-bone interface, the advantages of this new implant (reducing stress concentration in cervical cortex and satisfying varieties of clinical needs) were verified. The peak stress for the new design was about 30 percent less than that of the traditional implant and the flexibility of the design was also confirmed by changing the gap depth and the wall thickness.

Abstract: Stress shielding, which occurred always around traditional one part implant applied for prosthetic artificial lower limb attachment, would cause osteoporosis and thus result in the loose and extrusion, and then the malfunction of the implant. To improve the structure of the implant, a new type of implant—multi-part implant was developed in this article. Based on CT data and under the maximal load during a normal walking cycle, 3D finite element analysis (FEA) was carried out to analyze the stress of bone around the new implant in three cases of distally truncated femur at high position、middle-position and low-position. Results reveal that stress shielding and stress concentration under the new type of implant reduced effectively compared with the traditional one-part implant, and the stress distribution is much close to the natural bone. Application for distally truncated femur at middle-position and low-position was much better, while stress concentration was marked at high-position. Meanwhile, the stability in vivo can also be maintained with the multi-part implant. The new implant is promising applied for prosthetic limb.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the response of osteoblasts to calcium phosphate with different surface modification, and to evaluate the osteoinductive capabilities of these biomaterials. 60HA/40α-TCP ceramics sintered at 1250oC was applied in this study. A ceramic cylinder with F5mm×8mm and slice with F10mm×1mm were prepared respectively. One third of the ceramics was used to form bone-like apatite (BLA), and the surface of another one third was modified with collagen. Osteoblasts (1×106/ml) were co-cultured with the three kinds of thin slices for 12h, 24h and 48h. SEM observation was applied to evaluate whether the surface modification and BLA formation could affect the attachment and proliferation of osteoblast in vitro. The three kinds of cylinder samples were implanted in dog muscle to evaluate their differences in osteoinduction. Cells grew in multi-layers and attached to the surface and proliferated well in the collagen and HA/TCP group. In the untreated and BLA precipitated groups, cells did not attach to the surface well. Osteoinduction was good in the BLA precipitated group and the amount of bone formed was higher; in the untreated group and collagen-treated group, no bone formation was observed in the tested period. This result indicated that the scaffold used in cell-materials composites in vitro and that in osteoinductive material based tissue engineering in vivo was not same.

Abstract: The biomimetic approach of mineralization in vitro is adopted to investigate systematically the nucleation and growth of bone-like apatite on the surface of biomaterials such as bioceramics, metals and polymers, and those chemically surface-treated. The simulated environment is kept isothermic at the human body temperature of 36.5C with three kinds of simulated physiological fluids. The experimental results show that (1) inherent properties of biomaterials determine their bioactivity and the different crystalline structure of same materials results in the difference in bioactivity; (2) the bioactivity can effectively be improved by the surface treatment of biomaterials via chemical methods and by the addition of bioactive particles in a polymer matrix; (3) the bone-like apatite, nucleated and grown in the simulated body fluid with the same ion concentrations to that of the human plasma, possesses the same composition, structure and morphology despite of matrixes; (4) the difference in bioactivity with biomaterials is indicated by the different time for bone-like apatite to nucleate and to grow on their surfaces.

Abstract: A revised dynamic immersion device was designed, and the effects of flowing speed of SBF in inner pores of ceramics on the formation of apatite in the pores were investigated in this study. The results showed some crystals were overlaid on the walls of inner pores. The crystal shape changed with flow rate of RSBF. When flow rates of RSBF were 2 ml/min, some stamen-like crystals formed on the inner walls of ceramics. In the ceramics in RSBF with flow rate of 5ml/min, besides more stamen -like crystals, a thin layer of fine deposits was overlaid on the walls of inner holes and the surface of the stamen -like crystals. But when the flow rate was 8 ml/min, only a thick layer of fine deposits on the walls of inner pores could be found. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results revealed the deposits obtained in this study are carbonate hydroxyapatite (CHA).

Abstract: The osteoinduction of Calcium Phosphate (CaP) had been proved and generally been investigated by in vivo implantation. However, the mechanism of the osteoinductivity was not clear and it was difficult to judge the osteoinductivity in vitro. In this study, Mouse C2C12 cell line, a kind of myoblast precursor cell, was employed to co-culture with CaP. The induction of cell differentiation by materials was tested by MTT method, fluorescence observation, especially the mRNA expression of Osteocalcin, Type I collagen and Fibronectin by RT-PCR. It was founded that C2C12 cells could be induced to expression osteocalcin when growth on the surface of the HA/TCP ceramics. At the same time, the ceramics with different composition and sintering temperature seemed to induce difference expression level of the related genes. The results proved that phase composition was one of the most important factors in the regulation of bone-related genes. This study provided a potential model to evaluate the osteoinductivity of CaP ceramics in vitro.

Abstract: Porous titanium with good strength and three-dimension pore structure was fabricated by using H2O2 as vesicant foaming titanium powder. The compressive strength, bending strength and Young’s modulus of porous titanium with the porosity of 58vol% are 190.7Mpa, 159Mpa and 4.15Gpa, respectively, similar to that of the nature bone. This kind of porous titanium with good bio-mechanical compatibility may be potential to alleviate the problems caused by the mismatch of the strength and Young's modulus between implant (110 GPa for Ti) and bone. Moreover, the pores (mainly in 100-700µm) are all interconnected and there are many microspores (about 10µm) in the wall of the macrospores. This porous structure would endow the materials with better activity.