A comparison of adsorbed and grafted fibronectin coatings under static and dynamic conditions

Coatings for medical devices are expected to improve their surface biocompatibility mainly by being bioactive, i.e. stimulating healing-oriented interactions with living cells, tissues and organs. In particular, for stent applications, coatings are often designed to enhance the endothelialization process. The coating strategy will be primarily responsible for the interfacial properties between the substrate and the coating, which must show high stability. Therefore, the present work aims at comparing the stability of adsorbed and grafted fibronectin, a protein well-known to promote endothelialization. Fibronectin coatings were deposited on fluorocarbon films generated by a plasma-based process on stainless steel substrates. Then, deformation tests were performed in order to simulate the stenting procedure and stability tests were completed under static and under-flow conditions. Coatings were characterized by XPS, AFM, water contact angle, immunostaining and ToF-SIMS analyses. The results show higher stability for the grafted coatings; indeed, the integrity of the protein simply adsorbed was strongly compromised especially after under-flow tests. Both coatings exhibited similar behavior after deformation and static tests. These results clearly show the impact of the coating strategy on the overall stability of the coatings as well as the importance of under-flow investigations.