Hyaluronic Acid-Functionalized Electrospun Polyvinyl Alcohol/Polyethyleneimine Nanofibers for Cancer Cell Capture Applications

Capturing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with sufficient sensitivity and specificity in vitro is of paramount importance for early cancer diagnosis. Here a facile approach to immobilizing hyaluronic acid (HA) onto electrospun polyvinyl alcohol/polyethyleneimine (PVA/PEI) nanofibers for capturing cancer cells overexpressing CD44 receptors is reported. In this study, electrospun PVA/PEI nanofibers were crosslinked using glutaraldehyde vapor, covalently conjugated with HA via N-(3-dimethy-laminopropyl)-N-ethylcarbodiimide/N-hydroxysuccinimide coupling reaction, followed by neutralization of the remaining fiber surface PEI amines via acetylation. The formed nanofibers were characterized using different techniques. It is shown that the HA-modified PVA/PEI nanofibers with a mean diameter of 459.7 nm possess a smooth and uniform fibrous morphology, similar to the PVA/PEI nanofibers without HA modification. The HA-modified PVA/PEI nanofibers display good cytocompatibility and hemocompatibility as confirmed by cell viability, hemolysis, and anticoagulant assays. Importantly, with the modified HA, the nanofibers exhibit superior capability to capture CD44 receptor-overexpressing cancer cells. The developed HA-modified PVA/PEI nanofibers may hold a great promise to be applied for capturing CTCs for cancer diagnosis applications.