[Visualizing living fibroblast on co-cultured denture base resin by green fluorescent protein marker introduced into...

Visualizing living cells growing on co-cultured biomaterials is ideal for material biocompatibility evaluation in vitro. In this experiment, mouse fibroblasts L929 were labeled by introducing the gene coding enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) marker into the cells. Morphology as well as proliferation of labeled cells surrounding or on the surface of co-cultured denture base resin slides were observed by use of phase-contrast microscope and fluorescent microscope directly. It was found that residual methyl methacrylate (MMA) in the denture base resin exhibited transient cytotoxicity to fibroblasts and this transient cytotoxicity could be eliminated by pre-extracting the resin with ddH2O for a short time. This fact demonstrated that even slight cytotoxicity of materials could be detected through imaging of living cells near material or material touched. And it was suggested that imaging of living cells co-cultured with biomaterial is helpful to understanding biocompatibility of materials more accurately.