Development of a PDMS scaffold for the cultivation of animal cells

Abstract

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is an appropriate material as a scaffold for cell cultures due to its characteristics of biocompatibility, transparency, and flexibility. In this research, PDMS film was fabricated by spin-coating, and the thickness of the film was reduced by diluting PDMS solution with hexane to reduce the volume of substrate. By using 40 times of hexane to PDMS solution, the thickness of the film was reduced from 5μm to 420nm. However, the hydrophobicity of PDMS film made it difficult for cells to attach and grow on the polymer surface. To solve this problem, the hydrophobic surface was treated with four kinds of chemicals, (3-cyanopropyl) triethoxysilane (CPTES), (3-aminopropyl) trimethoxysilane (APTMS), (3-aminopropyl) triethoysilane (APTES) and hydrochloric acid (HCl) after corona treatment. HeLa cells, bovine mesenchymal stem cells and bovine satellite cells were cultivated on the PDMS film to check the effectiveness of the film as a substrate for the growth of cells. In this experiment, widely used plastic cell plate was selected as control which cannot act as a substrate. By measuring the absorbance value correlated to the number of cells, the growth rate of cells were compared. The cell growth on the HCl-treated PDMS films showed the highest effectiveness when the number of cells were measured after 72 hours of seeding. These results indicate the potential of nanoscale thin PDMS film as a substrate for cell cultivation although the surface-modified PDMS thin films showed lower effectiveness than the control plate.