Comparison of the osteoblast and myoblast behavior on hydroxyapatite microgrooves.

Surface topography is one of the most important surface properties of biomaterials and microfabrication techniques provide new routes to produce precisely controlled surface topographies for investigating the topographic effects on cell behavior. In this study, hydroxyapatite (HA) microgrooved surfaces were used to study the osteoblast and myoblast response to the surface micro-features. The microgrooves were first produced on silicon wafers by photolithography, and then coated with HA using sputtering technique. Orientation angle (OA) was used to evaluate the contact guidance introduced by microgrooves and form index (FI) was introduced to describe the cell morphology change. The results show that the microgroove effects on myoblasts are more obvious than those on osteoblasts, and the two types of cells are sensitive to different sizes of microgrooves. The microgrooves with 8 microm width strongly affect both osteoblasts and myoblasts, while the microgrooves with 24 microm width strongly affect myoblasts only. These results confirm that the surface topographic effect is of cell specific, and therefore, design of surface topographic features must be different for myoblasts and osteoblasts. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.