The Effect of Coating Process of Titanium Plates on the Osteoblast Proliferation and Collagen Synthesis

Han, Seung Kyu; Yoo, Sang Chul; Kim, Woo Kyung

Abstract

Titanium plates are becoming widely used as a craniomaxillofacial plating system since they provide rigid fixation. Fairly extensive publications have been reported about the techniques of internal fixation, the evolution of the principles, and facial fracture biomechanics. However, the influence of coating process on bone healing has not been determined yet. The coating process consists of several stages-cleansing, preparation to remove oxidative membrane, coating process by an electric arc and thermodynamic stabilization. Among these, coating process influences chemical property of titanium implants. This study was designed to compare the effect of coating process of titanium plates on the bone healing in vitro using four internationally available titanium plates. Human fetal osteoblast cell line was cultivated. Five thousand osteoblasts per well were incubated in a 96-well culture plate with either one of four titanium plates(Osteomed silver plate(r), Osteomed gold plate(r), Jeil silver plate(r), Jeil gold plate(r)) on top. The medium used in this study was Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium including 5% fetal bovine serum and the titanium plates were cut into squares with 4mm in length. On the 4th day of plating, osteoblast proliferation was determined by MTT method. To measure the production of collagen, the collagen type I carboxy-terminal propeptide enzyme immunoassay was used. Each titanium plate was tested 16 times. There were few differences among control and gold plate groups in osteoblast proliferation and collagen synthesis. However, the silver titanium groups showed less osteoblast survival and collagen synthesis than control and gold titanium groups. Between Osteomed (Addison, TX, U.S.A.) and Jeil Medical(Seoul, Korea) plates, no significant difference was seen in both silver and gold plate groups. These results demonstrated that the coating process of titanium plates could influence the bone healing, and the gold plates were superior to the silver plates on alone culture model.