Bioinstructive Microenvironments for Cell Culture, Tissue Integration and Nanomedicine enabled by Plasma Surface Activation

Materials used in biomedicine are selected according to bulk properties, such as mechanical, electrical and optical, required for particular in-vivo and in-vitro applications. However, their surfaces almost always provide suboptimal biological microenvironments and do not promote the desired biological responses.<br/>This presentation will describe sustainable and readily scalable surface modification processes that use plasma to enable resilient and easily tailorable biofunctionalization of surfaces. We will examine how plasma activates a range of materials and structures for spontaneous, reagent-free, covalent functionalization with bioactive molecules and hydrogels. Typical time scales of cell culture and tissue integration necessitate covalent immobilization to prevent interface instability due to desorption and exchange with molecules in the surrounding aqueous environment. Functional molecules that can be immobilized to create tailored cell microenvironments include but are not limited to, oligonucleotides, enzymes, peptides, aptamers, cytokines, antibodies, cell-adhesion extra-cellular matrix molecules, and histological dyes. The covalent immobilization occurs on contact via radicals embedded in the surface by energetic plasma species.<br/>After a review of the fundamental science, plasma processes to modify the internal surfaces of multi-well plates, porous scaffolds, and micro/nanostructures will be presented. Strategies to immobilize biological microenvironment patterns and hydrogels onto the plasma-activated surfaces and to prepare multi-functionalizable nanoparticles will be discussed, together with strategies to control the density and orientation of surface-immobilized biomolecules