Titanium and its alloys are widely used as biomaterials and interact well with bone tissue. In order, to evaluate more than just morphological osseointegration by histological slides the work aimed to approach a molecular evaluation of bone-implant using lectinhistochemistry (LHC), which binds with high specificity carbohydrates (sugar residues) presents in membrane glycoproteins with the use of lectins. The implanted samples were obtained by powder metallurgy, Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy with and without gelatin. Pores were achieved by adding gellatin 5 wt% to the hydrogenated metallic powder, after near net shape processing, the samples were thermal treated in vacuum (300 °C/90min) and sintered in high-vacuum (1150 °C/14h). The samples were characterized for porosity (~30%), and subsequently were implanted in rat’s femur bone. After 4 weeks of healing process, bone with implant were sampled to perform LHC in paraffin embedded tissue in histological slides using the lectins PNA, UEA-1, WGA, sWGA and RCA-1. All samples osseointegrated well with the bone, no fibrous capsule was present in the bone which was in contact with the implant. With the molecular approach of osseointegration, adjustments in the processing and structure of macroporous titanium based implants can be performed to achieve friendly structure.
