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Honeycomb porous films as permeable scaffold materials for human embryonic stem cell‐derived retinal pigment epithelium
Author(s) -
Calejo Maria Teresa,
Ilmarinen Tanja,
Jongprasitkul Hatai,
Skottman Heli,
Kellomäki Minna
Publication year - 2016
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.35690
Subject(s) - materials science , retinal pigment epithelium , embryonic stem cell , homogeneous , stem cell , induced pluripotent stem cell , transplantation , retinal , nanotechnology , biophysics , scaffold , biomedical engineering , porosity , microbiology and biotechnology , composite material , biology , medicine , biochemistry , physics , surgery , gene , thermodynamics
Age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness in developed countries, characterised by the degeneration of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a pigmented cell monolayer that closely interacts with the photoreceptors. RPE transplantation is thus considered a very promising therapeutic option to treat this disease. In this work, porous honeycomb‐like films are for the first time investigated as scaffold materials for human embryonic stem cell‐derived retinal pigment epithelium (hESC‐RPE). By changing the conditions during film preparation, it was possible to produce films with homogeneous pore distribution and adequate pore size (∼3–5 µm), that is large enough to ensure high permeability but small enough to enable cell adherence and spreading. A brief dip‐coating procedure with collagen type IV enabled the homogeneous adsorption of the protein to the walls and bottom of pores, increasing the hydrophilicity of the surface. hESC‐RPE adhered and proliferated on all the collagen‐coated materials, regardless of small differences in pore size. The differentiation of hESC‐RPE was confirmed by the detection of specific RPE protein markers. These results suggest that the porous honeycomb films can be promising candidates for hESC‐RPE tissue engineering, importantly enabling the free flow of ions and molecules across the material. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 104A: 1646–1656, 2016.