Surface modifications play an important role in endowing implant surface with excellent biocompatibility and bioactivity. Among the bioinspired surface modifications, the mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) has aroused great interest of researchers. Herein, we fabricated PDA on diverse implant surfaces, including biopolymer, biometal, and bioceramic. Then the effects of PDA coating on cell responsive behaviors in vitro and bone formation capacity in vivo were evaluated in detail. The results showed that PDA coating was fabricated on diverse samples surface successfully, which could significantly improve the hydrophilicity of different material surfaces. Furthermore, the results indicated that PDA coating exerted direct enhancing on the adhesion, proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSCs) through FAK and p38 signaling pathways. During the process, the focal adhesion protein expression and osteogenic-related genes expression level (e.g., ALP, BMP2, BSP, and OPN) were considerably upregulated. Most importantly, the in vivo study confirmed that PDA coating remarkably accelerated new bone formation and enhanced osseointegration performance. Our study uncovered the biological responses stimulated by PDA coating to make a better understanding of cell/tissue-PDA interactions and affirmed that PDA, a bioinspired polymer, has great potential as a candidate and functional bioactive coating medium in bone regeneration and orthopedic application.
Keywords: cell signaling pathway; coating; osseointegration; osteogenic differentiation; polydopamine.