Synergistic Promoting Effects of AuNPs and Osteoblast Inducing Medium on Osteogenic Differentiation of Bone Mesenchymal Cells

Previous studies have demonstrated that Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can promote the osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and osteoblasts effectively; however, little is known about the synergistic effects of AuNPs on osteogenic differentiation. In this study, we evaluated the effects of AuNPs (size 20-100 nm) at different concentrations (0.5 and 1 ppm) on the osteogenic differentiation of MSCs. The experimental results exhibited that an optimal synergistic effect was observed with 0.5 ppm AuNPs treated during the early stage of osteogenesis, and the synergistic effect presented a time-dependent hysteresis when treated with 1 ppm AuNPs during the later stage of osteogenesis. Meanwhile, the results indicated that AuNPs exerts its functions via a time- and concentration-dependent manner; whereas, the potential interaction between AuNPs and osteogenic inducing medium had synergistic promoting effects, which would be helpful to design new osteogenic inducing materials for tissue engineering and other biomedical applications.