An experimental study of novel bioartificial materials applied to glycotechnology for tissue engineering

In the field of tissue engineering, development of the scaffold is one of the most important factors for successful tissue regeneration. Recently, various sugars have been conjugated to polystyrene derivative (PV–sugar), and attempts have been made to regulate specific cell growth and adhesion. In this study, we applied this technique to scaffold engineering for tissue engineering. At first, we examined six types of sugar carrying polystyrene derivatives as a coating material over the surface of culture dishes. Human fibroblasts were cultured on the coated dishes to observe the cell growth, adhesion and the cytoskeletal changes. The results showed that the PV–sugars had an effect on the cell adhesion but not on cell growth on the fibroblast. However, PV–sugar also resulted in various cytoskeletal changes with each sugar. Considering these results, we selected the following three sugars for in vivo study: LA, MA and GlcNAc. We conjugated the sugars onto collagen to make a novel biodegradable scaffold and implanted it on the dorsum of athymic mice. The 1-week samples of H-E staining showed that the GlcNAc especially activated migration of fibroblastic cells into the scaffold. These findings suggested that the glycoconjugate technique has the potential for new clinical applications in the preparation of artificial extracellular matrices.