Division of Polymer Science and Engineering, National Chemical Laboratory , Dr. Homi Bhabha Road, Pune 411008, India.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2014 Apr 9;6(7):5005-11. doi: 10.1021/am4060595. Epub 2014 Mar 20.
We report here a graft polymerization method to improve the cell adhesion property of Bombyx mori silk fibroin films. B. mori silk has evolved as a promising material for tissue engineering because of its biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, silk's hydrophobic character makes cell adhesion and proliferation difficult. Also, the lack of sufficient reactive amino acid residues makes biofunctionalization via chemical modification challenging. Our study describes a simple method that provides increased chemical handles for tuning of the surface chemistry of regenerated silk films (SFs), thus allowing manipulation of their bioactivity. By grafting pAAc and pHEMA via plasma etching, we have increased carboxylic acid and hydroxyl groups on silk, respectively. These modifications allowed us to tune the hydrophilicity of SFs and provide functional groups for bioconjugation. Our strategy also allowed us to develop silk-based surface coatings, where spatial control over cell adhesion can be achieved. This control over cell adhesion in a particular region of the SFs is difficult to obtain via existing methods of modifying the silk fibroin instead of the SF surface. Thus, our strategy will be a valuable addition to the toolkit of biofunctionalization for enhancing SFs' tissue engineering applications.
我们在此报告了一种接枝聚合方法，以改善家蚕丝素纤维膜的细胞黏附性能。家蚕丝由于其生物相容性和可生物降解性，已成为组织工程中很有前途的材料。然而，丝的疏水性使得细胞黏附和增殖变得困难。此外，缺乏足够的反应性氨基酸残基使得通过化学修饰进行生物功能化具有挑战性。我们的研究描述了一种简单的方法，为调节再生丝素膜（SF）的表面化学提供了更多的化学处理，从而可以控制其生物活性。通过等离子体蚀刻接枝 pAAc 和 pHEMA，我们分别在丝上增加了羧酸和羟基。这些修饰使我们能够调节 SF 的亲水性并提供用于生物偶联的官能团。我们的策略还使我们能够开发基于丝的表面涂层，从而可以实现对细胞黏附的空间控制。与通过现有方法修饰丝素纤维而不是 SF 表面来获得 SF 特定区域的细胞黏附的这种控制相比，这种控制更加困难。因此，我们的策略将是增强 SF 组织工程应用的生物功能化工具包的有价值的补充。
