Cell morphology in injectable nanostructured biosynthetic hydrogels

Even though inducing structural features on the nanometric scale has been shown to be a powerful tool in tissue engineering, almost all nanostructuring techniques available today cannot be applied to injectable hydrogel scaffolds. The current research explores such a novel technique and its effect on scaffold's properties, cell morphology, and cell-material interaction. Nanostructuring is achieved by covalently binding Pluronic® F127 molecules to biosynthetic hydrogels. Analysis of cell morphology revealed spindled cell morphologies at day 4 in culture. The bound Pluronic® F127 diminished the swelling ability and enhanced the Young modulus, thus indicating that the bound molecules crosslink the hydrogel. The relation between matrix characteristics and cell morphology was analyzed and the importance of nanostructuring was demonstrated.