Biocompatibility of plasma nanostructured biopolymers

Abstract

Many areas of medicine such as tissue engineering requires not only mastery of modification techniques but also thorough knowledge of the interaction of cells with solid state substrates. Plasma treatment can be used to effective modification, nanostructuring and therefore can significantly change properties of materials. In this work the biocompatibility of the plasma nanostructured biopolymers substrates was studied. Changes in surface chemical structure were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The morphology pristine and modified samples were determined using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The surface wettability was determined by goniometry from contact angle. Biocompatibility was determined by in vitro tests, the rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) were cultivated on the pristine and plasma modified biopolymer substrates. Their adhesion, proliferation, spreading and homogeneous distribution on polymers was monitored. It was found that the plasma treatment leads to rapid decrease of contact angle for all samples. Contact angle decreased with increasing time of modification. XPS measurements showed that plasma treatment leads to changes in ratio of polar and non-polar groups. Plasma modification was accompanied by a change of surface morphology. Biological tests found that plasma treatment have positive effect on cells adhesion and proliferation cells and affects the size of cell’s adhesion area. Changes in plasma power or in exposure time influences the number of adhered and proliferated cells and their distribution on biopolymer surface.