Promising strategies for treating diseases and conditions like cancer, tissue
necrosis from injury, congenital abnormalities, etc., involve replacing pathologic tissue
with healthy tissue. Strategies devoted to the development of tissue to restore, maintain,
or improve function is called tissue engineering. Engineering tissue requires three
components, cells that can proliferate to form tissue, a microenvironment that nourishes
the cells, and a tissue scaffold that provides mechanical stability, controls tissue
architecture, and aids in mimicking the cell’s natural extracellular matrix (ECM).
Currently, there is much focus on designing scaffolds that recapitulate the topology of
cells’ ECM, in vivo, which undoubtedly wields structures with nanoscale dimensions.
Although it is widely thought that sub-microscale features in the ECM have the greatest vii
impact on cell behavior relative to larger structures, interactions between cells and
nanostructures surfaces is not well understood.
There have been few comprehensive studies elucidating the effects of both feature
dimension and geometry on the initial formation and growth of the axons of individual
neurons. Reconnecting the axons of neurons in damaged nerves is vital in restoring
function. Understanding how neurons react with nanopatterned surfaces will advance
development of optimal biomaterials used for reconnecting neural networks Here, we
investigated the effects of micro- and nanostructures of various sizes and shape on
neurons at the single cell level.
Compulsory to studying interactions between cells and sub-cellular structures is
having nanofabrication technologies that enable biomaterials to be patterned at the
nanoscale. We also present a novel nanofabrication process, coined Flash Imprint
Lithography using a Mask Aligner (FILM), used to pattern nanofeatures in UV-curable
biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. Using FILM, we were able to pattern 50
nm lines in polyethylene glycol (PEG). We later used FILM to pattern nanowells in PEG
to study the effect of the nanowells on the behavior preadipocytes (PAs).
Results of our cell experiments with neurons and PAs suggested that
incorporating micro- and nanoscale topography on biomaterial surfaces may enhance
biomaterials’ ability to constrain cell development. Moreover, we found the FILM
process to be a useful fabrication tool for tissue engineering applications. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6881 |
| Date | 04 February 2010 |
| Creators | Fozdar, David Yash |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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