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Mechanobiology of Disease
Poster Abstracts
123
75-POS
Board 75
Effect of Physico-Mechanical Properties of PDMS Substrate on Cell Behavior
Jyoti Wala
.Soumen Das,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India.
Mechanical properties of cells and associated extracellular matrix play a critical role in several
microbiological phenomena such as cell migration, division, differentiation, contraction, wound
healing, and cancer propogation etc. Alteration in physico-mechano properties of scaffold helps
to understand the changes in bio-mechano-physical properties of cells which could be used as
mechanical signature to differentiate cancer and normal cells. In this study, four different
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) compositions by varying their base and cross-linker ratios (w/w)
(5:1, 10:1, 15:1 and 20:1) were considered as substrates and subsequently, modifying the surface
via oxygen plasma for cell culture process. The stiffness and elasticity of substrates increased
with increasing base to curing agent ratios for both treated and pristine substrates. The oxygen
plasma treated substrates demonstrated hydrophilic surface as confirmed by contact angle and
FTIR analysis and AFM analysis showed decrease in roughness for treated substrates. Various
substrates compositions and modification technique were used collectively to estimate cellular
mechanics. In the present study, HaCaT and 3T3 fibroblast cells were grown over the fabricated
substrates. The biological behavior mainly cellular morphology and growth rate were analyzed
by SEM and MTT assay. The plasma treated substrates with different compositions showed
higher proliferation and spreaded morphology of keratinocytes and fibroblast as compared to
pristine substrates and growth characteristic of cells differ for different cells and compositions.
However, among the treated scaffolds, composition having 15:1 ratio demonstrated the highest
cellular growth rate for HaCaT and 5:1 for 3T3 which may be due to change in mechanical
stiffness of substrate. Therefore, different surface modified substrates with enhanced bio-
physical properties may be explored for better understanding of differential behavior of normal
and cancer cells.