Source: Hospital of Stomatology
Written by: Hospital of Stomatology
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Recently, Associate Professor Zetao Chen from Hospital of Stomatology of Sun Yat-sen Univeristy (recruited by the “One Hundred Talents Program” of Sun Yat-sen University) published a paper unveiling the mechanisms underlying nanotopographies-mediated osteoimmunomodulation on ACS Nano (IF:13.942), which was collaborated with Prof. Yin Xiao from Queensland University of Technology and Prof. Krasimir Vasilev from the University of South Australia. (Link to this paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.6b07808).


A heated research area as it is, the researches on “nano-topography guided osteogenesis” at present are mainly focused on the modulatory effects on osteoblastic lineage cells, while immune cells have been well documented to play a vital on bone dynamics. This study for the first time emphasized the importance of manipulating immune cell response, thus enhancing osteogenesis. We compared the macrophage response stimulated by different surface chemistries (amine or acrylic acid) as well as different scales of the nano-topography (16,38, and 68 nm) and found that the osteoimmune environment generated by nano-engineered surfaces could affect the morphology of macrophages, transmission of extracellular physicochemical signals, activation of autophagy reaction and the osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells subsequently.

This study demonstrated that targeted osteoimmunomodulation could be manipulated via tuning the chemistry and nanotopography to achieve nanotopography-mediated osteogenesis, which implied a valuable strategy to apply a “nanoengineered surface” for the developing advanced bone biomaterials with favorable osteoimmunomodulatory properties.