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The influence of substrate modulus on retinal pigment epithelial cells
Author(s) -
White Corina,
DiStefano Tyler,
Olabisi Ronke
Publication year - 2017
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.35992
Subject(s) - materials science , scaffold , cell adhesion , tissue engineering , transplantation , microbiology and biotechnology , retinal pigment epithelium , retina , retinal , cell culture , biophysics , self healing hydrogels , biomedical engineering , adhesion , biology , biochemistry , medicine , neuroscience , genetics , surgery , polymer chemistry , composite material
Abstract Although transplantation of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells has shown promise for the treatment of retinal degenerative diseases, this therapeutic approach is not without challenges. Two major challenges are RPE cell dedifferentiation and inflammatory response following transplantation. The aim of this work is to understand how the rigidity of a scaffold, a relatively unexplored design aspect in retinal tissue engineering, affects RPE cells, particularly the pathways associated with the aforementioned challenges. Poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) of varying molecular weights from 3.4 to 20 kDa were photopolymerized to fabricate scaffolds. The Young's modulus of the scaffolds varied from 60 to 1200 kPa. A cell study was then conducted to test the effects of scaffold rigidity on RPE cells. A cell adhesion peptide motif of arginine‐glycine‐aspartic acid‐serine (RGDS) was conjugated to 60 and 1200 kPa scaffolds and ARPE‐19 cells, a human RPE cell line, were seeded onto these hydrogels. Cells grown on scaffolds demonstrated qualitatively different adhesion properties, metabolic activity, and gene expression at an mRNA level. IL‐6 and MCP‐1, two inflammation markers known to recruit microglial into the retina, had the same expression pattern with cells having the highest expression on the high modulus scaffold and lowest expression on the control substrate. This study demonstrates that scaffold rigidity, an important design parameter in other areas of tissue engineering, affects cell adhesion, activity, and expression of RPE cells. Though more exploration is needed, this begins to lay a foundation for optimizing scaffold rigidity to promote long‐term success of RPE scaffolds. © 2017 The Authors. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 1260–1266, 2017.