A material and surface morphology independent micro environment “niche” for tissue engineering

In vivo, the cell-cell and cell-ECM interaction contains various niches to regulate organ development. In this study, a micro environment niche, which is independent of material and surface morphology of scaffold, for cell culture is proposed. To define the niche, a micro vibration stage is used to provide precise vibrations on the cell culture device such that the micro shear stress niche between the material and the adhered cells can be estimated. The cultures of bovine endothelial cells (BEC) on three different material culture plates, tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS), poly lactide-co-glycolide (PLGA), and poly lactide acid (PLA), were conducted to illustrate the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrated that the micro shear stresses niche for BEC growth obtained from these three materials are about the same. To further verify the proposed method, the suitable reciprocating frequencies for BEC cultured on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) scaffold was estimated using the conductive shear stress obtained from the original scaffold materials. Proliferation assay further confirmed that the BECs did proliferate well under the calculated reciprocating frequencies. It is hoped that the proposed micro shear stress base niche can be a more cost and time effective solution than the scaffold morphology approaches for the enhancement of cell growth.