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Cell morphology in injectable nanostructured biosynthetic hydrogels
Author(s) -
YomTov Ortal,
Seliktar Dror,
BiancoPeled Havazelet
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of biomedical materials research part a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.849
H-Index - 150
eISSN - 1552-4965
pISSN - 1549-3296
DOI - 10.1002/jbm.a.35134
Subject(s) - materials science , self healing hydrogels , poloxamer , scaffold , morphology (biology) , tissue engineering , nanotechnology , covalent bond , cell encapsulation , biophysics , polymer , biomedical engineering , composite material , polymer chemistry , copolymer , organic chemistry , chemistry , medicine , biology , genetics
Even though inducing structural features on the nanometric scale has been shown to be a powerful tool in tissue engineering, almost all nanostructuring techniques available today cannot be applied to injectable hydrogel scaffolds. The current research explores such a novel technique and its effect on scaffold's properties, cell morphology, and cell‐material interaction. Nanostructuring is achieved by covalently binding Pluronic ® F127 molecules to biosynthetic hydrogels. Analysis of cell morphology revealed spindled cell morphologies at day 4 in culture. The bound Pluronic ® F127 diminished the swelling ability and enhanced the Young modulus, thus indicating that the bound molecules crosslink the hydrogel. The relation between matrix characteristics and cell morphology was analyzed and the importance of nanostructuring was demonstrated. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 102A: 4371–4379, 2014.