Award details

Defining nanoscale high through-put screening of stem cell-biomaterial interactions

Reference	BB/C516379/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Martyn Davies
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Morgan Alexander, Professor Stephanie Allen, Professor Clive Roberts, Professor Saul Tendler, Professor Philip Williams
Institution	University of Nottingham
Department	Sch of Pharmacy
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	345,150
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	15/08/2005
End date	14/02/2009
Duration	42 months

Abstract

Over the last 3 decades, there has been significant international activity in the search for a new generation of materials for biomedical applications. Critical to the emergence of a new biomaterial is its ability to support appropriate cellular attachment, growth and proliferation for the specific clinical application such as tissue engineering and cell therapy. One of the key issues to date in the identification of the optimum material is the ability to rapidly assess the wide chemical diversity of materials available in terms of the cell-material interactions. In a very recent work, Prof Bob Langer at MIT describes a new approach. Namely, a high-throughput miniaturised array system that enables the rapid screening of combinatorial biomaterial libraries to search for polymeric surfaces that will allow controlled differentiation of stem cells. The exploitation of all such high-throughput screening approaches however does not come without its difficulties and challenges based around the limited dimensions of the device. Once the screening process identifies a suitable candidate, the hunt is on to define what it is about the physiochemistry of such systems that illicits such cell-friendly response. Therefore, the creation of such miniaturised arrays demands a new and innovative approach for their characterisation in situ that is able to track the chemical, physical and biological properties of the polymer series across the array. The ability to work at the nanoscale level at a surface and the measurement of specific surface properties with a high degree of spatial discrimination across the array is the major challenge. This proposal seeks to address this specific need. It not only has specific relevance to the polymer array under study but also has a generic application to all such high-throughput screening systems. The specific aim of this proposal is to develop strategies for the in situ nanoscale characterisation of polymer array systems allowing the interactive development of new classes of biomaterials for the study of polymer-cell interactions. Specifically, we shall define the in situ interfacial chemical structure, topography and morphology of the polymer arrays with high degree of spatial and vertical resolution. We shall also study the biointeractions of such interfaces with selected protein systems including probing the surface interactions of immobilised peptide adhesion ligands, investigate the relationship between the above and material-cell interactions to identify, through an interactive process, leading candidate polymers for stem cell technology. This project will be undertaken as part of a major collaboration between the LBSA and Professor Bob Langer and Dr Dan Anderson at MIT.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	Industrial Biotechnology, Regenerative Biology, Stem Cells
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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