Stem-cell culture on patterned bio-functional surfaces

Abstract

Bio-functional surfaces have been created by printing proteins on antifouling surfaces in a customised geometry. Human umbilical cord neural stem cells incubated on the samples readily attach to the protein defined domains, where they have been monitored during 21 days of culture. The stability of the pattern varies with the density of cells anchored to the microstamped proteins. Highly packed cell patterned domains favoured non-differentiated mode, while low-density areas allowed the spreading out of the cells and differentiation. Tailoring the geometry (pattern size and distances) enables improving the monitoring of the stem cells' developmental processes. The biocompatible surfaces can serve as a model to study processes accompanying stem cell neural lineage commitment.

Applications and challenges of plasma processes in nanobiotechnology

“…providing amine, epoxy moieties), to change the properties of the active layer and its interaction with adsorbed proteins (conformation, bioactivity, packing, denaturation etc…). The PEO-like polymer is resistant to adsorption of proteins in liquid solution but we will see that proteins are readily attached to the PEO-like surface in dry conditions, as the ones used in micro contact printing: this property offers a decisive advantages in terms of process simplicity and robustness [42,43].…”

“…The advantage of the approach is the transfer directly from the stamp to the surface the chemicals, ligands or proteins of interest [59,60,61]. This technique has previously been successfully applied in producing highly contrasted chemical functionalities with sharp contours [62] and to pattern proteins for the study of bio/non-bio interactions and for cell attachment [43,63,64,65]. The main difficulties to design these surfaces concerns le anti fouling properties of the background to keep the proteins or cell microarrays stable in time.…”

“…The PEO layer has the important characteristic of being cell repellent in solution but protein adhesive under the dry conditions used during the microcontact printing operation [42,66]. The composition of the PLL or FN inking solution and the pH were critical to the quality of the pattern, which under optimised conditions could be effectively transferred to the substrate where it was stable for more than four weeks [43,65]. Details of the experiments are reported in [43].…”

“…The composition of the PLL or FN inking solution and the pH were critical to the quality of the pattern, which under optimised conditions could be effectively transferred to the substrate where it was stable for more than four weeks [43,65]. Details of the experiments are reported in [43]. Well-defined microstructures of PLL over a protein free background have been fabricated, as can be seen in figure 5, which shows fluorescence microscopy ( Figure 5 A-C) and Time of FlightSecondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) images ( Figure 5 D-G) of the polypeptide pattern.…”

Tissue Engineering of Organs: Brain Tissues

“…To this end, inkjet printing of biomolecules, or even cells, represents a unique and high-throughput method, which may prove to be more economically viable and timesaving than soft lithographic approaches. Similar to the previously described micro-patterning techniques, spatial organization of cells can be achieved by inkjet printing of biomolecular patterns on a cell nonadhesive background [63,120,123]. Alternatively, cells can be directly deposited onto predetermined positions on the scaffolds via inkjet printing [13,14,117,125,155,156].…”