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Georgia Tech researchers coated titanium implants with a material that improves healing and strengthens the implant’s adherence to bone.

A polymer coating for titanium implants aids in tissue healing, bone growth around an implant, and bonding of an implant to bone. Developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta), the thin coating is made of high-density polymer strands.

The team tested the in vivo performance of the coating, an engineered fibronectin, against uncoated titanium and titanium coated with an arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) peptide. After four weeks, they saw a 70% improvement in contact between the bone and the titanium implants coated with the engineered fibronectin fragment over the controls. Georgia Tech researcher Andres Garcia is also studying how to fill large gaps between bones.