Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, C2200, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Biofabrication. 2010 Sep;2(3):035005. doi: 10.1088/1758-5082/2/3/035005. Epub 2010 Sep 8.
A number of studies have investigated the behavior of neurons on microfabricated topography for the purpose of developing interfaces for use in neural engineering applications. However, there have been few studies simultaneously exploring the effects of topographies having various feature sizes and shapes on axon growth and polarization in the first 24 h. Accordingly, here we investigated the effects of arrays of lines (ridge grooves) and holes of microscale (approximately 2 microm) and nanoscale (approximately 300 nm) dimensions, patterned in quartz (SiO2), on the (1) adhesion, (2) axon establishment (polarization), (3) axon length, (4) axon alignment and (5) cell morphology of rat embryonic hippocampal neurons, to study the response of the neurons to feature dimension and geometry. Neurons were analyzed using optical and scanning electron microscopy. The topographies were found to have a negligible effect on cell attachment but to cause a marked increase in axon polarization, occurring more frequently on sub-microscale features than on microscale features. Neurons were observed to form longer axons on lines than on holes and smooth surfaces; axons were either aligned parallel or perpendicular to the line features. An analysis of cell morphology indicated that the surface features impacted the morphologies of the soma, axon and growth cone. The results suggest that incorporating microscale and sub-microscale topographies on biomaterial surfaces may enhance the biomaterials' ability to modulate nerve development and regeneration.
许多研究都调查了微制造形貌上的神经元行为，目的是开发用于神经工程应用的接口。然而，很少有研究同时探索具有不同特征尺寸和形状的形貌对轴突生长和极化的前 24 小时的影响。因此，在这里，我们研究了石英（SiO2）上微尺度（约 2 微米）和纳米尺度（约 300 纳米）的线（脊槽）和孔阵列对（1）细胞黏附、（2）轴突建立（极化）、（3）轴突长度、（4）轴突排列和（5）大鼠胚胎海马神经元形态的影响，以研究神经元对特征尺寸和几何形状的反应。使用光学和扫描电子显微镜分析神经元。结果发现，这些形貌对细胞附着几乎没有影响，但显著促进了轴突极化，亚微特征上的轴突极化比微特征上的更频繁。与光滑表面相比，神经元在直线上形成的轴突比在孔上的更长，轴突平行或垂直于线特征排列。对细胞形态的分析表明，表面特征影响胞体、轴突和生长锥的形态。结果表明，在生物材料表面上结合微尺度和亚微尺度形貌可以增强生物材料调节神经发育和再生的能力。
