Identify the possibility of cell migration regulation on PLGA coated surface by electrotaxis

Abstract

The area of tissue engineering has been studied in order to satisfy a large number of needs for organs and tissues. The synthetic materials which were developed for tissue engineering often integrate poorly with host tissue and fail over time due to wear and fatigue or adverse body response. Numerous experiments have shown that cells need an appropriate biomatrix or scaffold as an optimal cell support to develop their typical differentiated phenotype in vitro. In tissue engineering, it is desirable for the cells to be evenly distributed in the scaffold to obtain a uniform mechanical strength of the engineered tissue. Cell migration is an essential activity of the cells in various biological phenomena such as embryonic development, wound healing of damaged tissue, capillary vascularization in angiogenesis and migration of leukocytes to kill the bacteria around the wound site. Control of cell migration is the one way to spread the cells on the surface of 3D scaffolds and make the cells infiltrate into the scaffolds. The electrotaxis was used in this study to control the cell migration. We designed a new electrotaxis system because the established system focused on the investigation of electrotaxis mechanism and is not suitable for changing direction of dc EFs. nHDFs showed directional migration towards cathode in dc EFs (1 V/cm), and moved toward opposite direction when the polarity of dc EFs was reversed. The reorganization of actin cytoskelecton and polarization of golgi apparatus were also evaluated by immunostaining. The actin cytoskeleton elongated towards the cathode, and the golgi apparatus were polarized along the EFs. This study identified the possibility of cell migration control on the PLGA scaffold by electrotaxis.