Nanobioengineering Group, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.
J Mater Sci Mater Med. 2013 Jan;24(1):189-98. doi: 10.1007/s10856-012-4785-1. Epub 2012 Oct 19.
Cellular microarrays present a promising tool for multiplex evaluation of the signalling effect of substrate-immobilized factors on cellular differentiation. In this paper, we compare the early myoblast-to-osteoblast cell commitment steps in response to a growth factor stimulus using standard well plate differentiation assays or cellular microarrays. Our results show that restraints on the cell culture size, inherent to cellular microarrays, impair the differentiation outcome. Also, while cells growing on spots with immobilised BMP-2 are early biased towards the osteoblast fate, longer periods of cell culturing in the microarrays result in cell proliferation and blockage of osteoblast differentiation. The results presented here raise concerns about the efficiency of cell differentiation when the cell culture dimensions are reduced to a simplified microspot environment. Also, these results suggest that further efforts should be devoted to increasing the complexity of the microspots composition, aiming to replace signalling cues missing in this system.
细胞微阵列为在细胞分化过程中对基质固定因子的信号效应进行多重评估提供了一种很有前途的工具。在本文中，我们使用标准的孔板分化测定法或细胞微阵列比较了成肌细胞向成骨细胞早期细胞定向步骤对生长因子刺激的反应。我们的结果表明，细胞微阵列固有的对细胞培养大小的限制会损害分化结果。此外，尽管在固定有 BMP-2 的斑点上生长的细胞早期偏向于成骨细胞命运，但在微阵列中进行更长时间的细胞培养会导致细胞增殖和阻止成骨细胞分化。这里呈现的结果引起了人们对细胞分化效率的关注，因为当细胞培养尺寸缩小到简化的微点环境时。此外，这些结果表明，应该进一步努力增加微点组成的复杂性，旨在替代该系统中缺失的信号线索。
