Metavarayuth Kamolrat, Villarreal Esteban, Wang Hui, Wang Qian
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA.
Biomater Transl. 2021 Jun 28;2(2):165-173. doi: 10.12336/biomatertransl.2021.02.006. eCollection 2021.
The surface free energy of a biomaterial plays an important role in the early stages of cell-biomaterial interactions, profoundly influencing protein adsorption, interfacial water accessibility, and cell attachment on the biomaterial surface. Although multiple approaches have been developed to engineer the surface free energy of biomaterials, systematically tuning their surface free energy without altering other physicochemical properties remains challenging. In this study, we constructed an array of chemically-equivalent surfaces with comparable apparent roughness through assembly of gold nanoparticles adopting various geometrically-distinct shapes but all capped with the same surface ligand, (1-hexadecyl)trimethylammonium chloride, on cell culture substrates. We found that bone marrow stem cells exhibited distinct osteogenic differentiation behaviours when interacting with different types of substrates comprising shape-controlled gold nanoparticles. Our results reveal that bone marrow stem cells are capable of sensing differences in the nanoscale topographical features, which underscores the role of the surface free energy of nanostructured biomaterials in regulating cell responses. The study was approved by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, School of Medicine, University of South Carolina.
生物材料的表面自由能在细胞与生物材料相互作用的早期阶段起着重要作用，深刻影响蛋白质吸附、界面水可及性以及细胞在生物材料表面的附着。尽管已经开发了多种方法来调控生物材料的表面自由能，但在不改变其他物理化学性质的情况下系统地调节其表面自由能仍然具有挑战性。在本研究中，我们通过在细胞培养底物上组装各种几何形状不同但均用相同表面配体（十六烷基三甲基氯化铵）封端的金纳米颗粒，构建了一系列具有可比表观粗糙度的化学等效表面。我们发现，当骨髓干细胞与包含形状可控金纳米颗粒的不同类型底物相互作用时，表现出不同的成骨分化行为。我们的结果表明，骨髓干细胞能够感知纳米级形貌特征的差异，这突出了纳米结构生物材料的表面自由能在调节细胞反应中的作用。该研究获得了南卡罗来纳大学医学院机构动物护理和使用委员会的批准。
