Stahl Patrick J, Yu S Michael
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Hall 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ; Institute for NanoBioTechnology, The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Hall 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Soft Matter. 2012 Jan 1;8:10409-10418. doi: 10.1039/C2SM25903F.
Effective synthetic tissue engineering scaffolds mimic the structure and composition of natural extracellular matrix (ECM) to promote optimal cellular adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Among many proteins of the ECM, collagen and fibronectin are known to play a key role in the scaffold's structural integrity as well as its ability to support cell adhesion. Here, we present photocrosslinked poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) hydrogels displaying collagen mimetic peptides (CMPs) that can be further conjugated to bioactive molecules CMP-CMP triple helix association. Pre-formed PEGDA-CMP hydrogels can be encoded with varying concentration of cell-signaling CMP-RGD peptides similar to cell adhesive fibronectin decorating the collagen fibrous network by non-covalent binding. Furthermore, the triple helix mediated encoding allows facile generation of spatial gradients and patterns of cell-instructive cues across the cell scaffold that simulate distribution of insoluble factors in the natural ECM.
有效的合成组织工程支架模仿天然细胞外基质（ECM）的结构和组成，以促进最佳的细胞粘附、增殖和分化。在ECM的众多蛋白质中，胶原蛋白和纤连蛋白在支架的结构完整性及其支持细胞粘附的能力方面起着关键作用。在此，我们展示了具有胶原蛋白模拟肽（CMP）的光交联聚（乙二醇）二丙烯酸酯（PEGDA）水凝胶，其可通过CMP-CMP三螺旋缔合进一步与生物活性分子缀合。预先形成的PEGDA-CMP水凝胶可以用不同浓度的细胞信号传导CMP-RGD肽进行编码，类似于通过非共价结合装饰胶原纤维网络的细胞粘附性纤连蛋白。此外，三螺旋介导的编码允许在整个细胞支架上轻松生成细胞指导信号的空间梯度和模式，从而模拟天然ECM中不溶性因子的分布。
