E7-Modified Substrates to Promote Adhesion and Maintain Stemness of Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have drawn great attention in clinical applications due to the self-renewal ability, multi-differentiation potential, and low immunogenicity. However, there are challenges in the ex vivo expansion of MSCs, including low efficiency, stemness loss, and safety. Therefore, it is crucial to construct a substrate that can show an alterable affinity to MSCs, and induce efficient cell expansion with minimal stemness loss. In this study, EPLQLKM (E7)-modified substrates with tunable E7 densities are fabricated on PEGylated substrates. The PEG layer with an average thickness of 1.7 nm shows good antifouling ability. E7-modified substrates have an improving effect on adhesion and spreading of the rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (rBMSCs), along with the increase of E7 densities. rBMSCs on E7-modified substrates maintain the stem cell phenotypes, and shows robust proliferation and multilineage differentiation, especially on the substrates with high E7 densities. In summary, this study provides a novel strategy of E7 functionalization to promote adhesion and maintain stemness of MSCs, which holds great potentials in the functionalization of microcarriers for the expansion of MSCs.

Automated summary

This study successfully improved the adhesion, spreading, and stemness of rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (rBMSCs) by fabricating E7-modified substrates on PEGylated substrates, showing better results especially on substrates with higher E7 densities.