Plankton is made of microscopic organisms living in salty or fresh waterish environments. Among these, shelled diatoms microalgae are capable to biomineralize inorganic silicate salts to produce nanostructured silica skeletons known as frustules. Diatom frustules are attractive for material scientists due to their possibility to be used as micro/nano structures useful for building up smart functional nanomaterials. Contrary to industrial silica, biosilica is produced at mild natural conditions. Here we present works about green extraction of biosilica from centric diatom species, chemically decorated with the antioxidant TEMPO radical trap, and used for bursting bone cells growth. Near this, we demonstrated that an in vivo functionalization of diatom biosilica with a bisphosphonate compound, sodium alendronate, leads to a final in vivo decorated and extracted material which exhibited the property of induction of osteoblasts activity and inhibition of osteoclasts proliferation.
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