Controlled release of basic fibroblast growth factor from a water-floatable polyethylene nonwoven fabric sheet for maintenance culture of iPSCs

Ayako Oyane; Hiroko Araki; Maki Nakamura; Yasuhiko Aiki; Kumiko Higuchi; Alexander Pyatenko; Masaki Adachi; Yuzuru Ito

doi:10.1039/c9ra06906b

Controlled release of basic fibroblast growth factor from a water-floatable polyethylene nonwoven fabric sheet for maintenance culture of iPSCs

RSC Adv. 2019 Dec 23;10(1):95-104. doi: 10.1039/c9ra06906b. eCollection 2019 Dec 20.

Authors

Ayako Oyane¹, Hiroko Araki¹, Maki Nakamura¹, Yasuhiko Aiki², Kumiko Higuchi², Alexander Pyatenko³, Masaki Adachi⁴, Yuzuru Ito²

Affiliations

¹ Nanomaterials Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Central 5, 1-1-1 Higashi Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8565 Japan a-oyane@aist.go.jp.
² Biotechnology Research Institute for Drug Discovery, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Central 6, 1-1-1 Higashi Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8566 Japan.
³ National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Central 5, 1-1-1 Higashi Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8565 Japan.
⁴ R&D Center, Katayama Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. 4-1-7 Ina Minoh Osaka 562-0015 Japan.

Abstract

Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) is an essential supplement for culture media to support the proliferation of human pluripotent stem cells, while preserving their pluripotency. However, it is extremely unstable under cell culture conditions at 37 °C. Therefore, a culture medium supplemented with bFGF needs to be changed every day to maintain an effective concentration of bFGF. This study aimed to create a bFGF-releasing material via simple bFGF adsorption following oxygen plasma treatment by using a water-floatable polyethylene (PE) nonwoven fabric sheet as a bFGF-adsorbent material. Preliminary oxygen plasma treatment enhanced bFGF adsorption onto the sheet by increasing its surface water wettability. Based on the bFGF concentration in the adsorption solution, the resulting bFGF-adsorbed sheet showed different bFGF-release profiles in the culture medium. The bFGF-adsorbed sheet prepared under optimum conditions released bFGF in a sustained manner, maintaining the bFGF concentration in the culture medium of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) at ≥10 ng mL^-1 even without medium change for as long as 3 d. The bFGF released from the sheet retained its biological activity to support colony formation of iPSCs while preserving their pluripotency. This type of bFGF-releasing sheet can be used as a new form of bFGF supplement for the culture media of stem cells and would make a significant contribution to stem cell-based research and development.