2020 Volume 20 Issue 3 Pages 173-178
By efficiently inducing mesenchymal stem cells into tendon cells, we aimed to construct a simple culture device for regenerating tendon tissue. In this study, we designed a culture substrate that forcibly controls the direction of cultured cells, investigated the gene expression level of stem cells after 2-dimensional free-swelling culture, and clarified the effect of inducing differentiation into tendon cells. We have developed a cell culture membrane with a unidirectional groove on a silicone rubber film. When the stem cells were seeded on the cell culture film, it could be confirmed by fluorescence observation that the cells were strongly oriented in one direction when the groove width was 10 μm. When the groove width was over 10 μm, the cell orientation tended to be weak. On the other hand, according to the analysis result of the gene expression level, when the groove width was narrow, the expression levels of both of type I collagen and tenascin C which specifically expressed in tendon cells increased. As a result, it became possible to easily induce differentiation into tendon cells by narrowing the groove structure.
