Micro-Patterned Nanowire Surfaces Encourage Directional Neural Progenitor Cell Adhesion and Proliferation

Abstract

Peripheral nerve damage is common in the United States, with an estimated 200,000 patients treated surgically each year. Autografts, the current gold standard treatment, require that the patient trade functionality by transplanting a nerve from elsewhere in the body. For this reason, tissue-engineering scaffolds that can regenerate nervous tissue and that can direct proliferation need to be investigated. In this work we investigated the influence of micro-patterned nanowire surfaces on neuronal progenitor cell adhesion and proliferation. We created a simple micro-patterning process to create a micro-patterned scaffold with regions lacking a nano-topography approximately 60 microns in width bordered by regions with a nanowire topography approximately 400 microns in width. We hypothesized that neural progenitor cells would preferentially adhere to the regions containing the nano-topography and in turn would avoid regions lacking the nano-topography. Our results indicate that we can direct neural progenitor cell proliferation using this technique. Furthermore, the results show that after 2 days of culture, cells contacting the boundary have elongated morphology. After 5 days of culture, quantifying dimensions on the cell aggregates reveals that they grow twice as long as they do wide on micro-patterned nanowires when compared to controls. These studies suggest that neural progenitor cell growth can be directed by simply creating a scaffold with distinct linear regions of nano-topography bordered by a smooth, hard, hydrophobic surface.

Scaffolds for hand tissue engineering: the importance of surface topography

“…Similar results have been found for other tissues within the hand, such as cartilage, muscle, blood vessels, nerve and skin (Bayati et al, 2013;Bechara and Popat, 2013;Wu et al, 2014;Yildirimer et al, 2012). For example, surface modifications of chitosan scaffolds using cell-recognition motifs, attachment domains recognized by cells, have been shown to stimulate chondrogenesis by enhancing proliferation of chondrocytes (Kuo and Wang, 2011).…”

Nerve guidance conduit with a hybrid structure of a PLGA microfibrous bundle wrapped in a micro/nanostructured membrane

“…Their experimental results indicated that micro/ nanohybrid structures could affect the morphology of cells and promote cell differentiation. 22 Materials with micro/ nanostructures can modulate the specific expression of neural cells such as neuronal polarity, axon guidance, synaptogenesis, and electric transductions. 19,20,23,24 In this study, we propose a novel conduit that mimics the natural structure and environment of neural cells to effectively guide the growth of regenerating neural cells.…”

Biomaterials patterning regulates neural stem cells fate and behavior: The interface of biology and material science

“…Even though cell colonies became twofold after 5 days in comparison with NSCs cultured on PCL and nanowire. These data added a notion that fabrication of nanotopographical regions in distinct substrates with hard, smooth, and hydrophobic consistency could dictate and direct cell fate (Figure2w) 54,55. In addition to the effect of micro and nano-sized dimensions on the induction of specific phenotypes in cultured cells, the combination of this modality with other approaches could improve the efficiency of phenotype acquisition in cultured NSCs.…”