5 g/L sodium bicarbonate, 0.1 mM non-essential amino acids, and 1.0 mM sodium pyruvate. Cultures were maintained at 37°C in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2. Cells were then seeded onto the autoclaved titanium samples placed in a 12-well culture plate (Falcon, BD Biosciences, San
Jose, CA, USA) at a density of 5 × 103 cells/cm2 for 3 days for cell selleck chemical adhesion assay and 1 × 104 cells/cm2 for 1 week for cell proliferation assay, respectively. Cell adhesion For cell adhesion experiments, 3 days after cell plating, non-adherent cells were washed with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). The adherent cells were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde (USB Corp., Cleveland, OH, USA) for 1 h at room temperature and washed with PBS. After fixation, the cells were permeabilized with 0.1% Triton X-100 (Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, St. Louis, MO, USA) in PBS for 15 min at 4°C. Cells were then washed with PBS and incubated with rhodamine phalloidin (Life Technologies Corporation, Grand Island, NY, USA) for 15 min for actin filament stain and with diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI; Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Waltham, MA, USA) for 5 min for
nuclei stain. The images of the stained fibroblasts were taken using a NVP-BSK805 cell line fluorescent microscope to examine the cell adhesion morphology and selleck chemicals cytoskeletal arrangement. For SEM observation, cells were fixed with 2.5% glutaraldehyde solution (Merck & Co., Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA) for 1 h at room temperature. Samples were rinsed in PBS solution twice, dehydrated in a series of ethanol (40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, and 100%) and critical point dried with a critical point dryer (CPD 030, Leica Microsystems, Wetzlar, Germany). Cell proliferation Additional cell proliferation was quantified 1 week after cell plating at a density of 1 × 104 cells/cm2 using cell proliferation reagent WST-1 (Roche, Woerden, Netherlands) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. On the 7th day, cells on the nanotubes were washed with PBS twice. The cells were incubated with a medium containing 10% WST-1 cell proliferation reagent at 37°C in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2 for
2 h. The solution was then retrieved during from each well to a 96-well plate, and optical densities were measured using a spectrophotometer (Tecan Group Ltd., Männedorf, Switzerland) at 450 nm. All experiments were carried out in triplicate, and at least three independent experiments were performed. Data were presented as mean ± standard deviation and analyzed by analysis of variances using SPSS 12.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). A p value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results and discussion Figure 1a,b,c,d shows the SEM micrographs of as-anodized TiO2 nanotubes with the diameters of 10, 25, 50, and 100 nm produced by electrochemical anodization at the applied voltages of 5, 10, 20, and 40 V, respectively.