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Polymer Microarrays for High Throughput Discovery of Biomaterials
Published on: January 25, 2012
Polymer surface functionalities that control human embryoid body cell adhesion revealed by high throughput surface
Jing Yang1, Ying Mei, Andrew L Hook
1Laboratory of Biophysics and Surface and Analysis, School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Biomaterials
|September 14, 2010
Summary
High throughput screening of acrylate polymers identified surface chemistry controlling cell adhesion. Time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF SIMS) revealed specific chemical groups that promote or inhibit human embryoid body cell attachment.
Area of Science:
- Biomaterials Science
- Surface Chemistry
- Cell Biology
Background:
- Combinatorial polymer microarrays enable high throughput materials discovery.
- Understanding surface structure-function relationships is crucial for developing new biomaterials.
- Protein adsorption and cellular response are key factors in biomaterial performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To combine high throughput screening with high throughput surface characterization (HT-SC) to identify surface structure-function relationships.
- To determine how surface chemical moieties control protein adsorption and subsequent cellular response.
- To identify specific acrylate polymer surface properties that influence human embryoid body (hEB) cell adhesion.
Main Methods:
- Synthesized 496 acrylate polymers in a microarray format.
- Screened hEB cell adhesion to each polymer spot using a high throughput procedure.
- Performed HT-SC including time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF SIMS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), water contact angle (WCA), and atomic force microscopy (AFM).
- Utilized partial least squares (PLS) regression for multivariate analysis to establish structure-function relationships.
Main Results:
- Identified a correlation between ToF SIMS analysis of surface chemistry after fibronectin (Fn) pre-conditioning and hEB cell adhesion.
- Secondary ions indicative of adsorbed Fn correlated with increased cell adhesion.
- Discovered specific polymer functionalities that reduced cell adhesion.
- Found a strong relationship between ToF SIMS spectra of bare polymers and cell adhesion.
- No correlation was found between cell adhesion and wettability, surface roughness, or elemental/functional surface composition.
Conclusions:
- Surface chemistry, as analyzed by ToF SIMS, plays a critical role in controlling protein adsorption and subsequent cell adhesion.
- Both the bare polymer surface chemistry and adsorbed fibronectin influence cellular adhesion.
- ToF SIMS combined with multivariate analysis is a powerful approach for identifying surface moieties that govern cell adhesion, enabling targeted biomaterial design.
