Honeycomb porous films as permeable scaffold materials for human embryonic stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1646-1656 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. Part A |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2016 |
| Publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Abstract
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness in developed countries, characterised by the degeneration of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a pigmented cell monolayer that closely interacts with the photoreceptors. RPE transplantation is thus considered a very promising therapeutic option to treat this disease. In this work, porous honeycomb-like films are for the first time investigated as scaffold materials for human embryonic stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium (hESC-RPE). By changing the conditions during film preparation, it was possible to produce films with homogeneous pore distribution and adequate pore size (3-5 μm), that is large enough to ensure high permeability but small enough to enable cell adherence and spreading. A brief dip-coating procedure with collagen type IV enabled the homogeneous adsorption of the protein to the walls and bottom of pores, increasing the hydrophilicity of the surface. hESC-RPE adhered and proliferated on all the collagen-coated materials, regardless of small differences in pore size. The differentiation of hESC-RPE was confirmed by the detection of specific RPE protein markers. These results suggest that the porous honeycomb films can be promising candidates for hESC-RPE tissue engineering, importantly enabling the free flow of ions and molecules across the material.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- honeycomb films, permeability, pluripotent stem cells, retinal pigment epithelium, tissue engineering