CoCr-enriched medium modulates integrin-based downstream signaling and requires a set of inflammatory genes reprograming in vitro

Significant health concerns have been raised by the high levels of Cr and Co ions into whole blood as resulted of corrosion process released from biomedical implants, but very little is known about their biological behavior in governing cell metabolism. Thus, we prompted to address this issue by exploring the effects of CoCr enriched medium on both fibroblast and pre-osteoblast (pre-Ob) cells. Firstly, we showed there is a significant difference in Co and Cr releasing dependent on engineered surface, it being even more released in dual acid-etching treating surface (named w/DAE) than the machined surfaces (named wo/DAE). Thereafter, we showed CoCr affects pre-osteoblast and fibroblast metabolism by dynamically modulating integrin-based downstream signaling (FAK, Src, Rac1 and Cofilin). Specifically on this matter, we have shown there is dynamic s1-integrin gene activation up 24 hours in both pre-osteoblast and fibroblast. Our analysis showed also that both pre-Ob and fibroblast are important resource of pro-inflammatory cytokines when responding to CoCr enriched medium. In addition, survival-related signaling pathway was also affected interfering on survival and proliferating signal, mainly affecting CDK2, mapk-Erk and mapk-p38 phosphorylations, while AKT/PKB-related gene remained active. In addition, during cell adhesion PP2A (an important Ser/Thr phosphatase) was inactive in both cell lineages and it seems be a CoCr's molecular fingerprint, regulating specific metabolic pathways involved with cytoskeleton rearrangement. Altogether, our results showed for the first time CoCr affects cellular performance in vitro by modulating integrin activation-based downstream signaling and requiring a reprograming of inflammatory genes activations in vitro. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.