• Gras, Sally
• Charnley, Mirren
• Bongiovanni, Marie
• Reynolds, Nick

Abstract

Networks of nanoscale fibrous coatings from self-assembled peptides are promising candidates for biomaterials that act as artificial extracellular matrices that promote physiological mammalian cell culture. One particularly attractive feature is the possibility of adding bio-functional sequences to the peptides to, for example, promote cell attachment. However, these additions can affect assembly and resultant fibril morphology, hampering our ability to rationally design materials with specific well-defined structure function relationships.We use a previously developed method of masking the surface chemistry of surface bound fibrils, but retaining the nanoscale fibrous topography by the deposition of a plasma polymer film.By depositing the plasma polymer film on a range of different fibrils decorated with cell adhesive chemistries (RGD and cycloRGDfK) we were able to deconvolute chemical effects from topographical for cultured epithelial cells. We observed a chemically controlled promotion of cell attachment, spreading and focal adhesion formation, concomitant with a topographically induced increase in toxicity for the cycloRGDfK decorated fibrils. This highlights the importance of carefully considering both physical and chemical effects in the development of novel biomaterials.

Topics

• Deposition
• impedance spectroscopy
• morphology
• surface
• polymer
• toxicity
• biomaterials