Journal
MACROMOLECULAR BIOSCIENCE
Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH
DOI: 10.1002/mabi.201600278
Keywords
3D porous scaffolds; cell alignment; cell directionality; liquid crystal elastomers; mechanics
Funding
- U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) [CHE-1263087]
- Ohio Third Frontier (OTF) Program for Ohio Research Scholars Research Cluster on Surfaces in Advanced Materials
- DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory [DE-AC02-06CH11357]
- Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
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The authors report on series of side-chain smectic liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) cell scaffolds based on star block-copolymers featuring 3-arm, 4-arm, and 6-arm central nodes. A particular focus of these studies is placed on the mechanical properties of these LCEs and their impact on cell response. The introduction of diverse central nodes allows to alter and custom-modify the mechanical properties of LCE scaffolds to values on the same order of magnitude of various tissues of interest. In addition, it is continued to vary the position of the LC pendant group. The central node and the position of cholesterol pendants in the backbone of epsilon-CL blocks (alpha and gamma series) affect the mechanical properties as well as cell proliferation and particularly cell alignment. Cell directionality tests are presented demonstrating that several LCE scaffolds show cell attachment, proliferation, narrow orientational dispersion of cells, and highly anisotropic cell growth on the as-synthesized LCE materials.
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