Z. Hong, I. Ersoy, M. Sun, F. Bunyak, P. Hampel, Z. Hong, Z. Sun, Z. Li, I. Levitan, G. A. Meininger, and K. Palaniappan

J. Biomedical Material Research Part A, 2013

cell segmentation, active contours, high content, biomedical

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Abstract

Interactions between implanted materials and the surrounding host cells critically affect the fate of bioengineered materials. In this study, the biomechanical response of bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs) with different membrane cho- lesterol levels to polyacrylamide (PA) gels was investigated by measuring cell adhesion and spreading behaviors at varying PA elasticity. The elasticity of gel substrates was manipulated by cross-linker content. Type I collagen (COL1) was coated on PA gel to provide a biologically functional environment for cell spreading. Precise quantitative characterization of changes in cell area and perimeter of cells across two treatments and three bioengineered substrates were determined using a cus- tomized software developed for computational image analysis. We found that the initial response of endothelial cells to changes in substrate elasticity was determined by membrane cholesterol levels, and that the extent of endothelial cell spreading increases with membrane cholesterol content. All of the BAECs with different cholesterol levels showed little growth on substrates with elasticity below 20 kPa, but increased spreading at higher substrate elasticity. Cholesterol- depleted cells were consistently smaller than control and cho- lesterol-enriched cells regardless of substrate elasticity. These observations indicate that membrane cholesterol plays an im- portant role in cell spreading on soft biomimetic materials con- structed with appropriate elasticity