Dual mechanism β-amino acid polymers promoting cell adhesion

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 562 - 13
• Main Authors: Chen, Qi, Zhang, Donghui, Zhang, Wenjing, Zhang, Haodong, Zou, Jingcheng, Chen, Mingjiao, Li, Jin, Yuan, Yuan, Liu, Runhui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 25.01.2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 13/1; 13/51; 14/19; 140/131; 140/146; 147/3; 49/90; 49/91; 639/301/54/2295; 639/301/54/989; 639/301/54/990; 64/86; Adhesion; Adhesives; Amino Acid Sequence; Amino acids; Amino Acids - chemistry; Amino Acids - metabolism; Animals; Biomedical materials; Cations; Cell adhesion; Cell adhesion & migration; Cell Adhesion - drug effects; Cell Adhesion - physiology; Cell culture; Cell Line; Chirality; Copolymers; Culture Media, Serum-Free - pharmacology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hydrogels - chemistry; Hydrogels - metabolism; Hydrophobicity; Mice; multidisciplinary; Oligopeptides - chemistry; Oligopeptides - metabolism; Osteoblasts - cytology; Osteoblasts - drug effects; Osteoblasts - metabolism; Peptides; Photoelectron Spectroscopy; Polyethylene Glycols - chemistry; Polyethylene Glycols - metabolism; Polymers; Polymers - chemistry; Polymers - metabolism; Proteolysis; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Surface Properties; Surgical implants
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20858-x

Cell adhesion has tremendous impact on the function of culture platforms and implants. Cell-adhesive proteins and peptides have been extensively used for decades to promote cell adhesion, however, their application suffers from their easy enzymatic degradation, difficulty in large-scale preparation and expensiveness. To develop the next-generation cell-adhesive materials, we mimic the cell adhesion functions and mechanisms of RGD and KRSR peptides and design cell-adhesive cationic-hydrophobic amphiphilic β-amino acid polymers that are stable upon proteolysis and easily prepared in large scale at low cost. The optimal polymer strongly promotes cell adhesion, using preosteoblast cell as a model, by following dual mechanisms that are independent of sequence and chirality of the statistic copolymer. Our strategy opens avenues in designing the next-generation cell-adhesive materials and may guide future studies and applications. Cell adhesion peptides like RGD are important to biomedical applications but suffer from proteolysis as well as processing and cost issues. Here, the authors report on the development of cationic-hydrophobic amphiphilic β-amino acid polymers which function as cell adhesion motifs but are resistant to proteolysis.