Controlling the adsorption of osteopontin for mediating cell behaviour by using self-assembled monolayers with varying surface chemistry

Zhuoying Chen; Yan Fan; Lin Wang; Zhengqi Bian; Lijing Hao

doi:10.1039/d1ra04063d

Controlling the adsorption of osteopontin for mediating cell behaviour by using self-assembled monolayers with varying surface chemistry

RSC Adv. 2021 Nov 10;11(57):36360-36366. doi: 10.1039/d1ra04063d. eCollection 2021 Nov 4.

Authors

Zhuoying Chen¹, Yan Fan², Lin Wang^{1

2

3}, Zhengqi Bian^{1

4}, Lijing Hao^{1

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640 China msbzq@scut.edu.cn.
² National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction Guangzhou 510006 China msljhao@scut.edu.cn.
³ Key Laboratory of Biomedical Materials and Engineering of the Ministry of Education Guangzhou 510006 China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering of Guangdong Province Guangzhou 510006 China.
⁵ Innovation Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction Guangzhou 510006 China.
⁶ Bioland Laboratory (Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory) 510005 Guangzhou China.

Abstract

Osteopontin (OPN) is an important protein for mediating cell behaviour on biomaterials. However, the interactions between the chemical groups on the biomaterial surface and OPN still need to be further clarified, which has restricted the application of OPN in biomaterial functionalization. In the present study, we developed different self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with specific chemical groups, including SAMs-OH, SAMs-OEG, SAMs-COOH, SAMs-NH₂, and SAMs-PO₃H₂, to study the behavior of OPN on these SAMs. The results showed that SAMs-NH₂ could strongly adsorb OPN, and the amount of protein was highest on this material. Meanwhile, the lowest amount of OPN was present on SAMs-OEG. Interestingly, the unit-mass trend of bound OPN monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) on the SAMs was opposite to the OPN adsorption trend: lowest on SAMs-NH₂ but highest on SAMs-OEG. In vitro cell assay results showed that mouse bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (mBMSCs) on SAMs-COOH, SAMs-NH₂, and SAMs-PO₃H₂ with pre-adsorbed OPN showed promoted behaviour, in terms of spreading, viability, and the expression levels of α_v and β₃ genes, compared with the other two SAMs, demonstrating the higher bioactivity of the adsorbed OPN. We believe that our findings will have great potential for developing OPN-activated biomaterials.