Electroconductive agarose hydrogels modulate mesenchymal stromal cell adhesion and spreading through protein adsorption.
Alena CasellaAlyssa PanitchJ Kent LeachPublished in: Journal of biomedical materials research. Part A (2023)
Electrically conductive biomaterials direct cell behavior by capitalizing on the effect of bioelectricity in tissue homeostasis and healing. Many studies have leveraged conductive biomaterials to influence cells and improve tissue healing, even in the absence of external stimulation. However, most studies using electroactive materials neglect characterizing how the inclusion of conductive additives affects the material's mechanical properties, and the interplay between substrate electrical and mechanical properties on cell behavior is poorly understood. Furthermore, mechanisms dictating how electrically conductive materials affect cell behavior in the absence of external stimulation are not explicit. In this study, we developed a mechanically and electrically tunable conductive hydrogel using agarose and the conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS. Under certain conditions, we observed that the hydrogel physical and electrical properties were decoupled. We then seeded human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) onto the hydrogels and observed enhanced adhesion and spreading of MSCs on conductive substrates, regardless of the hydrogel mechanical properties, and despite the gels having no cell-binding sites. To explain this observation, we measured protein interaction with the gels and found that charged proteins adsorbed significantly more to conductive hydrogels. These data demonstrate that conductivity promotes cell adhesion, likely by facilitating increased adsorption of proteins associated with cell binding, providing a better understanding of the mechanism of action of electrically conductive materials.
Keyphrases
- tissue engineering
- drug delivery
- reduced graphene oxide
- single cell
- cell adhesion
- cell therapy
- bone marrow
- hyaluronic acid
- stem cells
- endothelial cells
- induced apoptosis
- wound healing
- mental health
- cystic fibrosis
- machine learning
- escherichia coli
- dna binding
- extracellular matrix
- binding protein
- transcription factor
- electronic health record
- drug release
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- protein protein
- cell cycle arrest