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    Cells preferentially grow on rough substrates

    Year: 2010

    Journal: Biomaterials, Volume 31, Issue 28, October 2010, Pages 7205-7212, 20111221

    Authors: Francesco Gentile a,b , Luca Tirinato b , Edmondo Battista c,d , Filippo Causa c,d , Carlo Liberale a , Enzo M. di Fabrizio a,b , Paolo Decuzzi b,e, *

    Organizations: a Nanobiotech Department, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova, Italy, b BioNEM – Center for Bio-/Nanotechnology and -/Engineering fro Medicine, University of Magna Graecia, Viale Europa - Loc. Germaneto, 88100 Catanzaro, Italy, c Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Italian Institute of Technology, Piazzale Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy, d Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University Federico II, Piazzale Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy, e Department of Nanomedicine and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 1825 Pressler St., 77030 Houston (TX), USA

    Substrate nanotopography affects cell adhesion and proliferation and is fundamental to the rational design of bio-adhesives, to tissue engineering and to the development of assays for in-vitro screening. Cell behavior on rough substrates is still elusive, and the results presented in the open literature remain controversial. Here, the proliferation of cells on electrochemically etched silicon substrates with different roughness and nearly similar surface energy was studied over three days with confocal and atomic force microscopy. The surface profile of the substrates is a self-affine fractal with a roughness Ragrowing with the etching time from not, vert, similar2 to 100 nm and a fractal dimension D ranging between about 2 (nominally flat surface) and 2.6. For four cell types, the number of adhering cells and their proliferation rates exhibited a maximum on moderately rough (Ra not, vert, similar 10–45 nm) nearly Brownian (D not, vert, similar2.5) substrates. The observed cell behavior was satisfactorily interpreted within the theory of adhesion to randomly rough solids. These findings demonstrated the importance of nanogeometry in cell stable adhesion and growth, suggesting that moderately rough substrates with large fractal dimension could selectively boost cell proliferation.