Nanoparticle Shaped Titanium Promotes Osteogenic Differentiation of Bone Mesenchymal Stem Cells Through Integrin/Integrin Linked Kinase/Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3β Axis.

Dental implantation is an important method in treating missing teeth, widely used in oral treatment. As regards to physical and mechanical properties, pure titanium (Ti) material has become the most common dental implant material for its high stability and biocompatibility, clinically. Cell-substrate interactions have vital contribution in regulating pertinent cell functions like adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Initiation of the signal cascades to modulate cells behavior can also relate to surface topography. Bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) primarily migrate and adhere to the surface of implant prosthesis in the process of cells adhesion. Moreover, it was verified that adhesion and differentiation ability of BMSCs is mainly determined by surface morphology of implant prosthesis. In this study, we employed nanoparticle cluster beam technique to establish a kind of nanoparticle surface modified Ti material to examine BMSCs' osteogenic differentiation. By examining osteospecific genes (osteocalcin, osteopontin and runx2) altered expressions, we found that nanoparticle modified Ti material can contribute to a higher up regulation of BMSCs osteogenic differentiation. During the process, ILK (integrin linked kinase) and Wnt/β-catenin signaling were expressed differentially. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that nanoparticle shaped Ti material induced osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs can be impaired by inhibiting ILK or Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Analyzation of the obtained results concludes that ILK-mediated activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling is principal for osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs, because of improved physical properties, nanoparticle modified Ti material are superior for cell attachment and osseointegration.