A new technique to improve the mechanical and biological performance of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene using a nylon coating

A new patent pending technique is proposed in this study to improve the mechanical and biological performance of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), i.e., to uniformly coat nylon onto the UHMWPE fiber (Firouzi et al., 2012). Mechanical tests were performed on neat and new nylon coated UHMWPE fibers to examine the tensile strength and creep resistance of the samples at different temperatures. Cytotoxicity and osteolysis induced by wear debris of the materials were investigated using (MTT) assay, and RT-PCR for tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) osteolysis markers. Mechanical test results showed substantial improvement in maximum creep time, maximum breaking force, and toughness values of Nylon 6,6 and Nylon 6,12 coated UHMWPE fibers between average 15% and 60% at 25, 50, and 70°C. Furthermore, cytotoxicity studies have demonstrated significant improvement in cell viability using the nylon coated UHMWPE over the neat one (72.4% vs 54.8%) for 48h and (80.7 vs 5%) for 72h (P<0.01). Osteolysis test results have shown that the expression levels of TNFα and IL-6 markers induced by the neat UHMWPE fiber were significantly higher than those induced by the Nylon 6,6 coated UHMWPE (2.5 fold increase for TNFα at 48h, and three fold increase for IL-6 at 72h (P<0.01)). This study suggests that UHMWPE coated with nylon could be used as a novel material in clinical applications with lower cytotoxicity, less wear debris-induced osteolysis, and superior mechanical properties compared to neat UHMWPE.