Extracellular matrix protein coatings for facilitation of urothelial cell attachment

Synthetic urothelium is an important goal for the tissue-engineering field that would have great utility for treating diseases and congenital defects affecting the urinary tract. A key step in the development of synthetic tissue is optimizing the conditions for coating biomaterials with cells of interest. Initial cell attachment is an important consideration when designing tissue-engineering scaffolds. The scaffold environment must also be conducive to cell proliferation and differentiation. The most popular materials for tissue-engineering scaffold often have suboptimal properties when analyzed for cell attachment and growth. It would then be of interest to know, for urinary tract tissue-engineering applications, which extracellular matrix protein coatings can facilitate urothelial cell attachment and encourage growth. Cells grown on 96-well cycloolefin plates coated with type IV or type I collagen exhibited improved initial attachment over plates coated with fibronectin or laminin. After 20 h, deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis was found to increase in cultures grown on type IV collagen, fibronectin, and laminin. Total metabolic activity of urothelial cell cultures was also monitored, and no difference was seen between any protein-coating conditions. The development of such reliable assays will be beneficial in monitoring the fate of scaffolds seeded with human urothelial cells.