Polymer-Demixed Nanotopography: Control of Fibroblast Spreading and Proliferation

Abstract

Cell response to nanometric scale topography is a growing field. Nanometric topography production has traditionally relied on expensive and time-consuming techniques such as electron beam lithography. This presents disadvantages to the cell biologist in regard to material availability. New research is focusing on less expensive methods of nanotopography production for in vitro cell engineering. One such method is the spontaneous demixing of polymers (in this case polystyrene and polybromostyrene) to produce nanometrically high islands. This article observes fibroblast response to nanometric islands (13, 35, and 95 nm in height) produced by polymer demixing. Changes in cell morphology, cytoskeleton, and proliferation are observed by light, fluorescence, and scanning electron microscopy. Morphological features produced by cells in response to the materials were selected, and cell shape parameters were measured with shape-recognition software. The results showed that island height could either increase or reduce cell spreading and proliferation in relation to control, with 13-nm islands producing cells with the greatest area and 95 nm islands producing cells with the lowest areas. Interaction of filopodia with the islands could been seen to increase as island size was increased.

Chondrogenic Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Oriented Nanofibrous Scaffolds: Engineering the Superficial Zone of Articular Cartilage

“…For example, both fibroblasts and osteoblasts exhibited decreased proliferation when cultured on substrates with nanofeatures and suppressed formation of actin network. 43,44 While our findings are consistent with the lack of actin fibers in cells cultured on nanotopographical features, hMSCs do not exhibit significant decrease in proliferation when cultured on the PCL fibers (Fig. 4), however.…”

Behavior of mouse spermatogonial stem-like cells on an electrospun nanofibrillar matrix

“…In ECM-cell interaction, focal adhesion contacts are formed in cells [7] and interact with ECM molecules using integrins, ECM-cell specific surface receptors [5,7,16]. This leads to signal transduction into the cells, possibly affecting cell behavior through the activation of the small GTPase Rac, or the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathways [23,26,27].…”

Synthetic nanostructures inducing differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells into neuronal lineage

“…Cells in their natural environment interact with extracellular matrix (ECM) components in the nanometer scale [6]. Recent findings underscore the phenomenon that mammalian cells do respond to nanoscale features on a synthetic surface [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Nanoscaled topography of synthetic materials has been receiving increasing attention because of its resemblance to in vivo surroundings.…”