Poly-lactic-glycolic-acid surface nanotopographies selectively decrease breast adenocarcinoma cell functions

Abstract

The ability of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA, 50:50 PLG/PGA, wt%) nanotopographies to decrease lung epithelial carcinoma cell functions (including adhesion, proliferation, apoptosis and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) secretion) has been previously reported. Specifically, results demonstrated decreased lung epithelial carcinoma cell VEGF synthesis on 23 nm surface-featured PLGA compared to traditional nanosmooth PLGA. However, clearly, different cell lines could have different behaviors on similar biomaterials. Thus, to investigate the universality of nanopatterned PLGA substrates to inhibit numerous cancer cell functions, here, breast epithelial adenocarcinoma cell (MCF-7) adhesion, proliferation, apoptosis and VEGF secretion were determined on different PLGA nanometer surface topographies. To isolate surface nanotopographical effects from all other surface properties, PLGA surfaces with various nanotopographies but similar chemistry and hydrophobicity were fabricated here. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) verified the varied nanotopographies on the PLGA surfaces prepared in this study. Importantly, results demonstrated for the first time significantly decreased breast adenocarcinoma cell functions (including decreased proliferation rate, increased apoptosis and decreased VEGF synthesis) on 23 nm featured PLGA surfaces compared to all other PLGA surface topographies fabricated (specifically, nanosmooth, 300 and 400 nm surface-featured PLGA surfaces). In contrast, healthy breast epithelial cells proliferated more (24%) on the 23 nm featured PLGA surfaces compared to all other PLGA samples. In summary, these results provided further insights into understanding the role PLGA surface nanotopographies can have on cancer cell functions and, more importantly, open the possibility of using polymer nanotopographies for a wide range of anticancer regenerative medicine applications (without resorting to the use of chemotherapeutics).