Abstract
When medical devices are developed, technologies to control the adhesion behaviors of the cells on the material surface are important. On phase-separated nanodomain structures of amphiphilic diblock copolymers, cell adhesion behaviors are influenced by any factors (for example, surface asperity, selective adhesion of proteins to domains, viscoelasticity of domains, and chemical composition are the suspicious factors). So nanodomain structured surfaces of block copolymers are expected as a modification of surface to control the cell adhesion behaviors. In this study, block copolymer, poly(2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine(MPC)-b-polydimethyl siloxane(PDMS)) and random copolymer, poly(MPC-r-3-(Methacryloyloxy)propyltris (trimethylsilyloxy)silane(MPTSSi)) are synthesized to induce heterogeneous and homogeneous sufaces, respectively. On both heterogeneous and homogeneous surfaces, almost same chemical compositions and following similar amount of protein adsorption was observed. However, significantly large amount of cells wee adhered on the phase-separated nanodomain structures of amphiphilic block copolymers, whereas no adhered cells were observed on homogeneously prepared random copolymer surface. Therefore, we found that the selective adsorption of protein, that is, cell-adhesive proteins, with high density on hydrophobic domains is an important factor on cell adhesion.
