Mechanical & Materials Engineering, Department of

 

Date of this Version

2012

Citation

BioResearch Volume 1, Number 5, October 2012

Comments

Copyright Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Open access

DOI: 10.1089/biores.2012.0255

Abstract

Modulating physical cell culture environments via nanoscale substrate topographic modification has recently been of significant interest in regenerative medicine. Many studies have utilized a polymer-demixing technique to produce nanotextured films and showed that cellular adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation could be regulated by the shape and scale of the polymer-demixed nanotopographies. However, little attention has been paid to the topographic fidelity of the polymer-demixed films when exposed to cell culture conditions. In this brief article, two polymer-demixing systems were employed to assess topographic changes in polymer-demixed films after fibronectin (FN) extracellular matrix protein adsorption and after incubation in phosphate-buffered saline at 37C. We showed that FN adsorption induced very small variations ( < 2 nm) to the polystyrene/polybromostyrene (PS/PBrS)-demixed nanoisland textures, not substantially altering the nanotopographies given by the polymer demixing. In addition, poly(L-lactic acid)/PS (PLLA/PS)-demixed nanoisland topographies using PLLA with Mw = 50 x 103 did not show notable degradation up to day 24.

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