Research Highlights: Highlights From The Latest Articles in Nanomedicine

Abstract

Nanomedicine (2014) 9(5), 573–576 ISSN 1743-5889 Aligned nanofibers give sense of direction to cells Evaluation of: Berns EJ, Sur S, Liuliu P et al. Aligned neurite outgrowth and directed cell migration in self-assembled monodomain gels. Biomaterials 35(1), 185–195 (2014). The dual nature of peptide amphiphiles (PAs), composed of an aliphatic hydrophobic part combined with a peptide section, has been exploited in the generation of nano­ structured gels. Previous work reported by Zhang et al. [1] already demonstrated the possibility of using PAs to generate aligned nanofibers through a thermal annealing pro­ cess. In the present work, Berns et al. demon­ strate that the bioactivity of this system can be further enhanced using co­assembly of a structuring PA with the capacity to form self­assembled nanofibers and functional PAs that present bioactive peptide epitopes (i.e., RGDS and IKVAV). The injection of the thermally annealed PA solutions into a calcium chloride solu­ tion generates noodle­like macroscopic struc­ tures composed of aligned nanofibers. A series of tests using different cells show that these nano­structured materials promote the regeneration of neural tissue; P19 cells cultured on these scaffolds present a direc­ tional neurite outgrowth aligned with the nanofibers. Moreover, neurons cultured on the aligned scaffolds form synaptic connec­ tions and propagate electrical signals. This is an indication that the scaffold allows trans­ fer of information by the neurons in a direc­ tional manner. Moreover, the authors dem­ onstrate that embryonic dorsal root ganglia cells migrate following the direction of the nanofibers. The results presented by Berns et al. demon strate the advantages that the co­ assembly can offer. Undoubtedly, the described nano­aligned scaffolds (with and without the presence of bioactive epitopes) fill a niche in the engineering of biomaterials for regeneration of tissues that require cell alignment or directional cell migration, as well as directional cell–cell communication (e.g., neural tissues, tendon, muscle, and so on).