RGD nanospacing is a regulator of stem cell differentiation

Nanopatterns of a cell-adhesive peptide arginine-glycine-aspartate (RGD) on a persistently non-fouling poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogel were prepared, and behaviours of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on patterns of five RGD nanospacings from 37 to 124 nm were examined under a full level of serum for eight days. Besides cell adhesion, osteogenic and adipogenic inductions of MSCs from rat bone marrow were observed in corresponding media.

l  Effect of RGD nanospacing on differentiation of stem cells

 Xuan Wang, Ce Yan, Kai Ye, Yao He, Zhenhua Li, and Jiandong Ding*, Biomaterials, 34(12) 2865-2874 (2013)

The effect of RGD nanospacing on lineage commitments of stem cells is unexpected and cannot be interpreted via the cell spreading effect. The differentiation of stem cells might be regulated inherently by nanospacing of bioactive ligands on the material surfaces.

Schematic presentation of the effect of RGD nanospacing on cell behaviours. When the RGD nanospacing in an ECM or a material substrate is less than a critical value about 70 nm, the focal adhesion complex could be well formed. In contrast, a large nanospacing might, despite formation of an RGD-integrin bioconjugation, disenable the necessary lateral crosslinking of cytoskeleton in the biological specific cell adhesion. Such an intracellular molecular cluster might also afford an unknown outside-in signal to regulate differentiation in cases of stem cells, with the results of adipogenic/osteogenic co-induction of MSCs on nanopatterns of small and large RGD nanospacings exemplified here.

The first author is a Ph.D student, Miss Xuan WANG.. The work was selected into Academic Corridor by Graduate Association. The poster is as follows: