September 6, 2017 by Adam Lowenstein, Florida Institute Of Technology Credit: Biotechnology Journal

An invention by Florida Institute of Technology's Shengyuan Yang was found to naturally narrow the spreading of stem cells and has the potential to induce and regulate their differentiation.

Using Yang's patented and patent-pending technology, stem cells were grown on microscopic glass balls immobilized in a gel medium. Unlike the well-spread stem cells grown on a two-dimensional surface, the stem cells on the glass balls were almost uniformly spindle-shaped . More interestingly, this surface-curvature-induced-restriction in cell spreading also induced the differentiation of the stem cells.

These findings imply that the curvature of a substrate, as provided by the glass balls, may be utilized and tuned for cell and tissue engineering.

The research was recently published in Biotechnology Journal.

Yang's team used glass balls with diameters ranging from 5 m to 4 mm. They found that the minimum diameter of a glass ball on which a human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) can attach and spread is 500 m. Their gene expression experiments revealed that the hMSCs growing on the glass balls with diameters of 1.1 mm and below were differentiating into fat cells without the addition of any differentiation induction media.

This means that surface curvatures of a substrate could potentially be designed and optimized to achieve or change a specific cell shape and function. And, due to the different sensitivities of different cell types to substrate curvatures, the particular curvature of a growth environment, such as glass balls of various sizes, may also be used to construct cell-sorting devices.

Based on the experimental findings, Yang has filed three patents to cover the applications of the concept of substrate curvature in sorting cells, in guiding stem cell differentiation, in directing cell attachment and spreading, and in inducing isotropic spreading of cells.

Some past studies have shown the role of geometrical cues in influencing the differentiations of stem cells on two-dimensional surfaces, but to date, the effects of substrates with defined-curvatures on the behaviors of stem cells are still missing. Yang said studies on the cellular responses to substrate curvature are necessary and critical for understanding the cellular behaviors in three-dimensional micromechanical environments and for designing effective and efficient three-dimensional micromechanical environments to control cell and tissue developments. With their unique class of curvature-defined substrates, micro glass ball embedded gels are able to systematically investigate the effects of substrate curvature on the behaviors of stem cells.

With this promising first published report, Yang's group will continue to systematically investigate the effects of substrate curvature on the behaviors of stem cells.

Explore further: Professor publishes on first-ever imaging of cells growing on spherical surfaces

More information: Sang Joo Lee et al, Substrate Curvature Restricts Spreading and Induces Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Biotechnology Journal (2017). DOI: 10.1002/biot.201700360

Shengyuan Yang, Florida Institute of Technology assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, with graduate student Sang Joo Lee, has published a paper on the first-ever imaging of cells growing on spherical ...

Bone tissue engineering is theoretically now possible at a large scale. A*STAR researchers have developed small biodegradable and biocompatible supports that aid stem cell differentiation and multiplication as well as bone ...

(Phys.org) A team of researchers working at the University of Colorado has found that human stem cells appear to remember the physical nature of the structure they were grown on, after being moved to a different substrate. ...

To date, it has been assumed that the differentiation of stem cells depends on the environment they are embedded in. A research group at the University of Basel now describes for the first time a mechanism by which hippocampal ...

Stem cells hold great promise for transforming medical care related to a diverse range of conditions, but the cells often lose some of their therapeutic potential when scientists try to grow and expand them in the laboratory. ...

An international team of researchers, funded by Morris Animal Foundation, has shown that adipose (fat) stem cells might be the preferred stem cell type for use in canine therapeutic applications, including orthopedic diseases ...

Significant headway has been made in controlling malaria. However, two vexing problems remain: currently available treatments are unable to block transmission of the parasite that causes the disease, and the parasite often ...

During World War II, the Soviet Red Army was forced to move their biological warfare operations out of the path of advancing Nazi troops. Among the dangerous cargo were vials of Francisella tularensis, the organism that causes ...

Researchers have shown for the first time that sharks show very strong preferences for particular individuals in their social networks over years and prefer to hang out with other individuals of the same sex and size, in ...

Half of all people are chronically infected with Helicobacter pylori, a Gram negative bacterium that plays a causative role in the development of gastric cancer. It comes in two types, one that is relatively harmless and ...

A series of sperm whale strandings saw 29 of the animals beached across the North Sea in early 2016. As these whales are not normally found in the North Sea, the strandings were a bit of a mystery. But a study is now proposing ...

Researchers from Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI) have published a study in which individual faces and other physical traits were predicted using whole genome sequencing data and machine learning. This work, from lead author Christoph ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Excerpt from:
Curved substrates restrict spreading and induce differentiation of stem cells - Phys.Org