Abstract
Rough surfaced substrates made by different methods have been shown to increase osteoblastic differentiation ; however, it has not been clear whether roughness itself was responsible for this increase. In this study, we examined the effect of roughened substrates, by excluding the factors other than roughness, on osteoblastic proliferation and diferentiation. Rat calvarial cells were cultured on plastic cover strips having varied degrees of roughness by the treatment with four kinds of grinding papers with different particle size. The proliferation and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) expression of calvarial cells increased on the rough surfaced cover strips. The proliferation and the expression increased in response to the increase in the degree of surface roughness upto approximately 0.8μm of average roughness, and then decreased thereafter. These results indicate that surface roughness by itself causes increases in osteoblastic proliferation and the differentiation in cell culture.
