Combinational effects of polymer viscoelasticity and immobilized peptides on cell adhesion to cell-selective scaffolds

Abstract

Immobilization of functional peptides on polymer material is necessary to produce cell-selective scaffolds. However, the expected effects of peptide immobilization differ considerably according to the properties of selected polymers. To understand such combinational effects of peptides and polymers, varieties of scaffolds including a combination of six types of poly(ε-caprolactone-co-D, L-lactide) and four types of cell-selective adhesion peptides were fabricated and compared. On each scaffold, the scaffold properties (i.e. mechanical) and their biological functions (i.e. fibroblast-/endothelial cell-/smooth muscle cell-selective adhesion) were measured and compared. The results showed that the cell adhesion performances of the peptides were considerably enhanced or inhibited by the combination of peptide and polymer properties. In the present study, we illustrated the combinational property effects of peptides and polymers using multi-parametric analyses. We provided an example of determining the best scaffold performance for tissue-engineered medical devices based on quantitative data-driven analyses.