Building 3D Architectures for Cardiomyocytes
Aylin Turgut,
PhD student (Final Year),
University of Nottingham
Pharmaceutical companies currently rely on animal models for drug screening. This is a very expensive and time-consuming process and in some cases has been shown to be a poor predictor of human toxicity (Burridge et al., 2014).
Substrates used to support human cardiomyocyte (CM) growth have been identified (Patel et al, 2015). Stem cell derived cardiomyocytes on these substrates do not adequately recapitulate the adult human cardiomyocytes in terms of maturity (Denning et al., 2015).
I am investigating how substrate architecture affects cardiomyocyte growth and behaviour using 2-photon lithography (2PL). Mature cardiomyocytes have been successfully grown on a number of polymers synthesised by UV polymerisation (Patel et al., 2015) -I have confirmed that 8 of these can be successfully processed by 2PL and 1 supports CM attachment. Photoinitiator concentration has been optimised to create a complete structure.
2PL enables structure fabrication with more accuracy compared to previous methods due to its sub-micron scale resolution (Maruo et al., 1997). This method will improve results as cells interact at the sub-micron scale (Dalby et al., 2007) and this will help identify architectures that support the most mature CMs possible. Recapitulating the adult human heart is critical for accurate drug response.
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