Systematic Studies of a Self-Assembling Peptide Nanofiber Scaffold with Other Scaffolds

Abstract

A designer self-assembling peptide nanofiber scaffold has been systematically studied with 10 commonly used scaffolds in a several week study using neural stem cells (NSC), a potential therapeutic source for cellular transplantations in nervous system injuries. These cells not only provide a good in vitro model for the development and regeneration of the nervous system, but may also be helpful in testing for cytotoxicity, cellular adhesion, and differentiation properties of biological and synthetic scaffolds used in medical practices. We tested the self-assembling peptide nanofiber scaffold with the most commonly used scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine including PLLA, PLGA, PCLA, collagen I, collagen IV, and Matrigel. Additionally, each scaffold was coated with laminin in order to evaluate the utility of this surface treatment. Each scaffold was evaluated by measuring cell viability, differentiation and maturation of the differentiated stem cell progeny (i.e. progenitor cells, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and neurons) over 4 weeks. The optimal scaffold should show high numbers of living and differentiated cells. In addition, it was demonstrated that the laminin surface treatment is capable of improving the overall scaffold performance. The designer self-assembling peptide RADA16 nanofiber scaffold represents a new class of biologically inspired material. The well-defined molecular structure with considerable potential for further functionalization and slow drug delivery makes the designer peptide scaffolds a very attractive class of biological material for a number of applications. The peptide nanofiber scaffold is comparable with the clinically approved synthetic scaffolds. The peptide scaffolds are not only pure, but also have the potential to be further designed at the molecular level, thus they promise to be useful for cell adhesion and differentiation studies as well as for future biomedical and clinical studies.

Facile micropatterning of dual hydrogel systems for 3D models of neurite outgrowth

“…Comparison of Puramatrix functionality as a 3D environment for cell encapsulation has been previously demonstrated with other popular hydrogels. 40 Agarose has been frequently used as a 3D matrices to investigate neurite growth, although modification of agarose is necessary to obtain significant axon extension. 15 Matrigel has shown promise as a 3D matrix for neural growth and neuronal-astrocyte co-cultures, 13 but the presence of incompletely defined ECM proteins and cytokines in Matrigel may complicate studies of molecular neurite guidance.…”

Compatibility of human fetal neural stem cells with hydrogel biomaterials in vitro

“…Previously, poly(α-hydroxy acid) polymers including poly(glycolic acid) (PGA), poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and their copolymers (PLGA) have been seeded with rodent stem/progenitor cells (Vacanti et al, 2001;Teng et al, 2002;Bhang et al, 2007;Gelain et al, 2007). It was unknown, though, whether these types of polymers were compatible with hNSCs.…”

“…PF127, Matrigel and PuraMatrix hydrogels possessed this important characteristic. The biocompatibilities of PuraMatrix and Matrigel with rodent neural precursor cells were recently compared to other commonly used scaffolds including poly(α-hydroxy acid) polymers (Gelain et al, 2007). Although some differences were observed in cell viability and differentiation capacity, the compatibilities of the hydrogel materials and other scaffolds were comparable.…”

Engineering Biomaterials to Influence Oligodendroglial Growth, Maturation, and Myelin Production

“…These peptides include the arginine-alanine-aspartic acid-alanine repeat unit that gives the material the alternative name 'RADA' peptides [Gelain et al, 2007]. Ylä-Outinen et al [2014] showed that Puramatrix, at concentrations between 5 and 25 weight percent (wt%) in solution, supported not only the growth of neurons from human embryonic stem cells, but also some differentiation into glial cells.…”