Copyright (c) 2026 Venettia Leslie, Rolando Gittens
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The increasing incidence of skeletal complications associated with cancer metastasis, impaired bone healing after radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and other bone density losses highlights the urgent need for minimally invasive and effective bone regeneration therapies. Conventional approaches based on solid mass implants remain limited by their invasive nature, challenges with osseointegration, and poor performance in physiological environments.
We present an optimized, microwave-assisted hydrothermal nanomodification of titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) microcarriers (~150 ?m in diameter) to generate biomimetic surfaces that mimic the hierarchical characteristics of bone. We refined a previously published protocol using H?O? as a solvent and modulating its concentration, temperature, and process duration. We generated surface nanostructures similar to those of trabecular bone, leaving water as the primary byproduct of the oxidation reaction.
Characterization of the nanomodified microcarriers revealed increased surface roughness and wettability, as well as changes in surface chemistry, confirming controlled oxidation. Cell adhesion experiments with VERO and MG-63 cells showed that nanomodified microcarriers can maintain cell adhesion and proliferation.
These results confirm the platform's ability to promote cell adhesion, as a critical first step in the bone restoration process. This strategy proposes a translational, locally injectable, minimally invasive, and relevant solution for bone regeneration in patients with complex skeletal deficiencies by miniaturizing decades of knowledge about titanium implants.
