earticle

영어

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are critical for numerous groundbreaking therapies in the field of regenerative medicine. Nanoscale topography of artificial substrates can greatly influence the fate of stem cells including adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Thus the design and manipulation of reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-based nanosheets and its electrical properties are of great importance to realize graphene-based electronics as a strategy in stem cells and tissue engineering applications. In this report, we propose that electro-conductive graphene oxide nanosheets with pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs) are an efficient platform for modulating and enhancing structure and function of hMSCs. Using a self-assembly method, we successfully coated graphene oxide (GO) on glass for fabricating GO nanocomposite and had tunable electrical conductivity of graphene oxide sheets. The hMSCs grown on the rGO films under PEMFs showed increased adhesion, indicated by a large number of focal adhesions, and higher mineralization markers of the extracellular matrix and their osteogenic differentiation in a controlled manner through vinculin, vimentin, osteopontin (OPN), fibronectin, calmodulin (caM) expressions, and differential hierarchical clustering by microarray in hMSCs. Here we show that rGO with PEMFs as a graphene-based cell stimulator provides a promising biocompatible nanocomposite that does not hamper the proliferation of hMSCs and accelerates their specific differentiation into bone cells. Our bottom-up biomechatronic approach of tuning the rGO-sheet properties provides a path to a broad new class of graphene-based materials and their use in a variety of applications.