Effect of spatial arrangement and structure of hierarchically patterned fibrous scaffolds generated by a femtosecond laser on cardiomyoblast behavior

Synergistic stimulation of surface topography and biphasic electric current promotes muscle regeneration

Developing a universal culture platform that manipulates cell fate is one of the most important tasks in the investigation of the role of the cellular microenvironment. This study focuses on the application of topographical and electrical field stimuli to human myogenic precursor cell (hMPC) cultures to assess the influences of the adherent direction, proliferation, and differentiation, and induce preconditioning-induced therapeutic benefits. First, a topographical surface of commercially available culture dishes was achieved by femtosecond laser texturing. The detachable biphasic electrical current system was then applied to the hMPCs cultured on laser-textured culture dishes. Laser-textured topographies were remarkably effective in inducing the assembly of hMPC myotubes by enhancing the orientation of adherent hMPCs compared with flat surfaces. Furthermore, electrical field stimulation through laser-textured topographies was found to promote the expression of myogenic regulatory factors compared with nonstimulated cells. As such, we successfully demonstrated that the combined stimulation of topographical and electrical cues could effectively enhance the myogenic maturation of hMPCs in a surface spatial and electrical field-dependent manner, thus providing the basis for therapeutic strategies.

Cell morphology as a design parameter in the bioengineering of cell-biomaterial surface interactions

Control of cell-surface interaction is necessary for biomaterial applications such as cell sheets, intelligent cell culture surfaces, or functional coatings. In this paper, we propose the emergent property of cell morphology as a design parameter in the bioengineering of cell-biomaterial surface interactions. Cell morphology measured through various parameters can indicate ideal candidates for these various applications thus reducing the time taken for the screening and development process. The hypothesis of this study is that there is an optimal cell morphology range for enhanced cell proliferation and migration on the surface of biomaterials. To test the hypothesis, primary porcine dermal fibroblasts (PDF, 3 biological replicates) were cultured on ten different surfaces comprising components of the natural extracellular matrix of tissues. Results suggested an optimal morphology with a cell aspect ratio (CAR) between 0.2 and 0.4 for both increased cell proliferation and migration. If the CAR was below 0.2 (very elongated cell), cell proliferation was increased whilst migration was reduced. A CAR of 0.4+ (rounded cell) favoured cell migration over proliferation. The screening process, when it comes to biomaterials is a long, repetitive, arduous but necessary event. This study highlights the beneficial use of testing the cell morphology on prospective prototypes, eliminating those that do not support an optimal cell shape. We believe that the research presented in this paper is important as we can help address this screening inefficiency through the use of the emergent property of cell morphology. Future work involves automating CAR quantification for high throughput screening of prototypes.

Micropatterning MoS2/Polyamide Electrospun Nanofibrous Membranes Using Femtosecond Laser Pulses

The capability of modifying and patterning the surface of polymer and composite materials is of high significance for various biomedical and electronics applications. For example, the use of femtosecond (fs) laser ablation for micropatterning electrospun nanofiber scaffolds can be successfully employed to fabricate complex polymeric biomedical devices, including scaffolds. Here we investigated fs-laser ablation as a flexible and convenient method for micropatterning polyamide (PA6) electrospun nanofibers that were modified with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). We studied the influence of the laser pulse energy and scanning speed on the topography of electrospun composite nanofibers, as well as the irradiated areas via scanning electron microscopy and spectroscopic techniques. The results showed that using the optimal fs-laser parameters, micropores were formed on the electrospun nanofibrous membranes with size scale control, while the nature of the nanofibers was preserved. MoS2-modified PA6 nanofibrous membranes showed good photoluminescence properties, even after fs-laser microstructuring. The results presented here demonstrated potential application in optoelectronic devices. In addition, the application of this technique has a great deal of potential in the biomedical field, such as in tissue engineering.