Bioactive polydimethylsiloxane surface for optimal human mesenchymal stem cell sheet culture

Human mesenchymal stem cell(hMSC)sheets hold great potential in engineering three-dimensional(3D)completely biological tissues for diverse applications.Conventional cell sheet culturing methods employing thermoresponsive surfaces are cost ineffective,and rely heavily on available facilities.In this study,a cost-effective method of layer-by-layer grafting was utilized for covalently binding a homogenous collagen I layer on a commonly used polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS)substrate surface in order to improve its cell adhesion as well as the uniformity of the resulting hMSC cell sheet.Results showed that a homogenous collagen I layer was obtained via this grafting method,which improved hMSC adhesion and attachment through reliable collagen I binding sites.By utilizing this low-cost method,a uniform hMSC sheet was generated.This technology potentially allows for mass production of hMSC sheets to fulfill the demand of thick hMSC constructs for tissue engineering and biomanufacturing applications.