Silk fibroin (SF)/nano-hydroxyapatite (n-HA) composites are potential biomaterials for bone defect repair. Up to now, the biological evaluation studies of SF/n-HA composites have primarily concentrated on their biocompatibility at cell level such as cell viability and proliferation and tissue level such as material absorption and new bone formation. In this work, SF/n-HA composites were fabricated using a simplified coprecipitation methods and were deposited onto Ti alloy substrates. Then the cell adhesion ability of SF/n-HA composites was observed by SEM and cell proliferation ability of SF/n-HA composites was determined by MU assay. The ALP activity, BGP contents, and Col I contents of MG-63 human osteosarcoma cells on SF/n-HA composites were quantitatively analyzed. HA nanocrystals were used as controls. These experiments showed that SF/n-HA composites had better cell adhesion and osteogenic differentiation abilities than n-HA materials. This work provides quantitative data to analyze the effect of SF/n-HA composites on cell osteogenic differentiation. (C) 2014, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.