Porous silicon based biomaterials for bone tissue engineering

An ideal material for orthopaedic tissue engineering should be biocompatible, biodegradable, osteoconductive, osteoinductive, mechanically stable, and widely available. Porous silicon (PSi), a silicon based material fulfills these criteria. It is biocompatible and biodegradable, and supports hydroxyapatite nucleation. The micro/nano-architecture of PSi may regulate cell behavior. The surface chemistry of PSi is flexible so that the interfacial properties between this material and living cells can be tailored easily by chemical modifications.; In this work, we have demonstrated that PSi can support and promote primary osteoblast growth, protein matrix synthesis, and mineralization both in vitro and in vivo. The osteoconductivity of PSi can be controlled by altering the micro/nano architecture of porous interface. Macro-scale porous silicon (MacPSi), with pore openings of approximately 1 mum, has the highest osteoconductive potential in vitro. We have further developed a hybrid biomaterial by coating MacPSi with recombinant adenovirus vectors encoding bone morphogenetic proteins, thus making the material osteoinductive both in vitro and in vivo. With this material, we are closer to an osteoconductive and osteoinductive medical device with drug delivery functions. The knowledge obtained in this study on the interaction between living cells and a semiconductor material will also be the foundation for further development of electronic and optoelectronic biointerfaced devices.