Modulation of cationicity of chitosan for tuning mesenchymal stem cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation

The aim of this study was to modulate the cationicity of chitosan to influence the mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) responses in terms of cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. The authors prepared water-soluble carboxymethyl chitosan hydrogels using genipin as the crosslinking agent. The chitosan cationicity was modulated by varying the genipin content from 0.5 to 10 wt. %. The results indicated that the cationicity exerted a striking modulation effect on various MSC responses. The increase of the genipin content, i.e., decrease of the free amino group content (cationicity), overall promoted the MSC adhesion, cytoskeleton organization, proliferation, and differentiation into the osteogenic lineage. A surprising cell alignment effect was also observed on chitosan samples with high genipin concentrations (>2.5%). The chitosan sample with the highest genipin concentrations (10%) exhibited the best MSC proliferation and highest protein expression levels toward osteogenic lineages. The genipin content also showed a strong modulation effect on MSC condensation, and cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, as suggested by the expressions of the sry related HMG box9 (Sox9), intercellular adhesion molecule 1, and N-Cadherin. Overall, the authors have demonstrated that modulation of cationicity (amino content) of chitosan is an effective and simple approach to tuning various MSC responses, including adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, as well as cell-cell interactions. Such findings might have important implications in biomaterial design for various biomedical applications.