New substrates for stem cell control

Abstract

The capacity to culture stem cells in a controllable, robust and scalable manner is necessary in order to develop successful strategies for the generation of cellular and tissue platforms for drug screening, toxicity testing, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Creating substrates that support the expansion, maintenance or directional differentiation of stem cells would greatly aid these efforts. Optimally, the substrates used should be chemically defined and synthetically scalable, allowing growth under defined, serum-free culture conditions. To achieve this, the chemical and physical attributes of the substrates should mimic the natural tissue environment and allow control of their biological properties. Herein, recent advances in the development of materials to study/manipulate stem cells, both and are described with a focus on the novelty of the substrates' properties, and on application of substrates to direct stem cells.This article is part of the theme issue 'Designer human tissue: coming to a lab near you'.

Optimization of long-term human iPSC-derived spinal motor neuron culture using a dendritic polyglycerol amine-based substrate

“…Our work and that of others has shown that h-iPSC derived MNs usually coalesce into large cell clusters which gradually detach from the culture device (Kuijlaars et al 2016; Taga et al 2019; Thiry et al 2020). This situation is most likely due to the degradation of the protein-based substrate (Matrigel or laminin) commonly used for coating, a process that can mediated by enzymes secreted by the cells (reviewed in Schmidt et al 2018; Clement et al submitted). To address this shortcoming, we sought to test the effect of a non-peptide polymer substrate, dPGA, that was shown to improve primary neuron culture conditions, possibly due to its resistance to degradation by cell-secreted proteases (Clement et al submitted).…”

Cell-imprinted-based integrated microfluidic device for biomedical applications: Computational and experimental studies

“…Researches have shown that stem cells' shape and synthetic extracellular matrices can control their fate [12][13][14][15][16][17] . Also, the researches con rm the importance of surface topography for stem cell differentiation [18][19][20][21][22][23] .…”

Computational and experimental studies of a cell-imprinted-based integrated microfluidic device for biomedical applications

“…The role of culture substrate in cellular behavior has been evaluated in several studies [9][10][11][12] . Also, researchers have confirmed the importance of surface topography for stem cell differentiation [13][14][15][16][17][18] .…”