Rapid osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells on hydroxyapatite nanocrystal clusters-oriented nanotopography

Although it has been well demonstrated that specific nanotopographies alone can direct the fate decision of stem cells, there is still a huge gap, and at the same time, denotes a large challenge to translate this concept into clinical trials. Herein, we reported on using a kind of clinically relative biomaterial, hydroxyapatite, to prepare a kind of specific nanotopography constructed by the randomly oriented hydroxyapatite nanocrystal clusters, through high temperature water vapour treatment of the plasma-sprayed hydroxyapatite slices. Cell experiments demonstrated that bone-marrow mesenchymal stem cells could exert a strong adhesive tension on the nanocrystal clusters-oriented topography, and the formed strong intracytoskeletal stress in turn promoted cells to osteogenic differentiation rapidly; the differentiation process was associated with, but faster than, the model of osteoblastic differentiation. Therefore, our work reported here extremely shortened the gap from the concepts of mechanotransduction, i.e., extracellular physical forces sponsored from materials features can induce mechanochemical conversion to alter the fate decision of stem cells, to the clinical trials.