Ex-vivo culture of neural stem cells in nanofiber scaffolds: cellular organization and dynamic systems

Miriam Calado Amores de Sousa

Key information

Authors:

Miriam Calado Amores de Sousa (Miriam Calado Amores de Sousa)

Supervisors:

Frederico Castelo Alves Ferreira (Frederico Castelo Alves Ferreira)

Published in

10/19/2018

Abstract

Stem cells (SCs) hold the potential to be applied into several regenerative therapies. The majority of SCs are anchorage dependent, requiring surface areas with appropriate topology for cultivation in clinically relevant numbers. A strategy for mimicking the natural SCs niche is the use of electrospun fibers, with dimensions (200-500nm in diameter) at the scale of the fibrous proteins present in the niche, providing high contact areas required for cellular adhesion. The use of scaffolds of aligned nanofibers is particularly interesting envisaging the regeneration of neural tissue, applied to neural stem cells (NSC), providing anisotropy to stem cell organization. Nanofibers of poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) were produced by electrospinning, subjected to aminolysis to introduce amine groups for chemical anchorage and functionalized with extracellular matrix (ECM) protein motifs: laminin (PCLLN) and RGD sequences (PCL-RGD).