Nava Michele M, Zandrini Tommaso, Cerullo Giulio, Osellame Roberto, Raimondi Manuela T
Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, 32 piazza Leonardo da Vinci, Milano, Italy.
Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IFN)-CNR and Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano, 32 piazza Leonardo da Vinci, Milano, Italy.
Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1612:253-266. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7021-6_19.
A strategy to modulate the behavior of stem cells in culture is to mimic structural aspects of the native cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interaction. An important example of such artificial microenvironments for stem cell culture is the so-called "synthetic niche." Synthetic niches can be defined as polymeric culture systems mimicking at least one aspect of the interactions between stem cells and the extracellular surroundings, including biochemical factors (e.g., the delivery of soluble factors) and/or biophysical factors (e.g., the microarchitecture of the ECM). Most of the currently available approaches for scaffold fabrication, based on self-assembly methods, do not allow for a submicrometer control of the geometrical structure of the substrate, which might play a crucial role in stem cell fate determination. A novel technology that overcomes these limitations is laser two-photon polymerization (2PP). Femtosecond laser 2PP is a mask-less direct laser writing technique that allows manufacturing three dimensional arbitrary microarchitectures using photosensitive materials. Here, we report on the development of an innovative culture substrate, called the "nichoid," microfabricated in a hybrid organic-inorganic photoresist called SZ2080, to study mesenchymal stem cell mechanobiology.
一种调节培养中干细胞行为的策略是模拟天然细胞与细胞外基质（ECM）相互作用的结构方面。这种用于干细胞培养的人工微环境的一个重要例子就是所谓的“合成生态位”。合成生态位可定义为聚合物培养系统，它模仿干细胞与细胞外环境之间相互作用的至少一个方面，包括生化因素（例如可溶性因子的递送）和/或生物物理因素（例如ECM的微观结构）。目前大多数基于自组装方法的支架制造方法，无法对底物的几何结构进行亚微米级控制，而这可能在干细胞命运决定中起关键作用。一种克服这些限制的新技术是激光双光子聚合（2PP）。飞秒激光2PP是一种无掩模直接激光写入技术，它允许使用光敏材料制造三维任意微观结构。在此，我们报告了一种创新培养底物“类生态位”的开发，该底物在一种称为SZ2080的有机-无机混合光刻胶中进行微制造，用于研究间充质干细胞力学生物学。
