Biomaterial Surface Characteristics Modulate the Outcome of Bone Regeneration around Endosseous Oral Implants: In Silico Modeling

Experimental investigations have demonstrated the importance of platelets and their activation for bone regeneration around oral implants. This study aimed to numerically demonstrate the key role of activated platelets which is controlled by implant surface characteristics. The cellular activities involved in the process of peri-implant endosseous healing can be represented by migration, proliferation, differentiation, removal, extracellular matrix synthesis and degradation, and growth factor production/release and decay. These activities are described by a system of highly coupled non-linear partial differential equations of taxis–diffusion–reaction type. Moreover, cell–biomaterial interactions were treated by including surface-specific model parameters. A well-designed in vivo model that looked at healing around oral implants with different surface properties was selected from literature to validate the results. Numerical simulations agreed well with the experimentally observed healing response and demonstrated that platelet-related model parameters, which were dependent on implant surface characteristics, modulate the pattern of healing.