Peptide aptamers: Novel coatings for orthopaedic implants

• Surface associating peptides bind to hydroxyapatite and titanium simultaneously.
• The peptides interact with titanium to allow deposition of a hydroxyapatite coating.
• This gives a low cost, low energy alternative method to implant coating manufacture.
• The coating increases the osteoinductive properties of the titanium.

Current processes for coating titanium implants with ceramics involve very high energy techniques with associated high cost and disadvantages such as heterogeneity of the coatings, phase transformations and inability to coat complex structures. In order to address the above problems, we propose a biomimetic hydroxyapatite coating process with the use of peptides that can bind both on titanium surfaces and hydroxyapatite. The peptides enabled homogeneous coating of a titanium surface with hydroxyapatite. The hydroxyapatite–peptide sandwich coating showed no adverse effects on cell number or collagen deposition. This makes the sandwich coated titanium a good candidate for titanium implants used in orthopaedics and dentistry.

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