Human mesenchymal stem cells growth and osteogenic differentiation on piezoelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride) microsphere substrates

The aim of this work was to determine the influence of the biomaterial environment on human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) fate when cultured in supports with varying topography. Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) culture supports were prepared with structures ranging between 2D and 3D, based on PVDF films on which PVDF microspheres were deposited with varying surface density. Maintenance of multipotentiality when cultured in expansion medium was studied by flow cytometry monitoring the expression of characteristic hMSCs markers, and revealed that cells were losing their characteristic surface markers on these supports. Cell morphology was assessed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Alkaline phosphatase activity was also assessed after seven days of culture on expansion medium. On the other hand, osteoblastic differentiation was monitored while culturing in osteogenic medium after cells reached confluence. Osteocalcin immunocytochemistry and alizarin red assays were performed. We show that flow cytometry is a suitable technique for the study of the differentiation of hMSC seeded onto biomaterials, giving a quantitative reliable analysis of hMSC-associated markers. We also show that electrosprayed piezoelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride) is a suitable support for tissue engineering purposes, as hMSCs can proliferate, be viable and undergo osteogenic differentiation when chemically stimulated.The authors thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for financial support under project PTDC/EEI-SII/5582/2014, Strategic Funding UID/FIS/04650/2013 and grants SFRH/BPD/90870/2012 (C.R.) and SFRH/BPD/121526/2016 (D.M.C). The authors acknowledge funding by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) through the project MAT2016-76039-C4-3-R (AEI/FEDER, UE) and from the Basque Government Industry Department under the ELKARTEK program. JLGR, LC, RSS and AS acknowledge funding by the Conselleria de Educación, Investigación, Cultura y Deporte of the Generalitat Valenciana through PROMETEO/2016/063 project. CIBER-BBN is an initiative funded by the VI National R&D&i Plan 2008–2011, Iniciativa Ingenio 2010, Consolider Program, CIBER Actions and financed by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III with assistance from the European Regional Development. This work was partially financed with FEDER funds (CIBERONC (CB16/12/00284)). The authors acknowledge the assistance and advice of Electron Microscopy Service of the UPVinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Future Souths: Aesthetics and Dialogues of the Global Souths

This book brings together essays, visual culture and dialogues from an interdisciplinary group of scholars including leading artists, designers, anthropologists, decolonial theorists and art historians living in/out of the global south. Contributors include: artists Rolando López (Aguascalientes, Mexico), Salote Tawale (Suva, Fiji/Sydney, Australia) and James Nguyen (Saigon, Vietnam/Sydney, Australia); decolonial theorists Walter Mignolo (Corral de Bustos, Argentina/Durham, US) and Dylan AT Miner (Turtle Island, Canada/Michigan, US); curators Zoe Butt (Saigon, Vietnam), Chandra Frank (Cape Town, South Africa/London, UK) and Edgar Alejandro Hernández (Mexico City, Mexico); art historians Verónica Tello (Santiago, Chile; Sydney, Australia), Carla Macchiavello (Santiago, Chile/New York, US) and Ruth Simbao (Grahamstown, South Africa); and designer Srdjan Jovanović Weiss (Belgrade, Serbia/New York, US).As this list of contributors reveals, the global south is not characterised by a specific group of nations economically disadvantaged or situated in the Southern hemisphere, but rather comprises disconnected territories and peoples affected by the inequality of globalisation and geopolitics. If the global south is not fixed to any nation, it is porous and fluid, with subjects of the global south migrating to the global North, and Northern economics harbouring in the South. The North is in the South just as the South is in the North. For the contributors of this book, the global south is not just geopolitical concept it is also a (fluid) point through which to interconnect, and locate affinities and solidarities, among disparate southern peoples, places, disciplines and ideas. As such, the book brings together distinct thinkers and voices from the south through an intrinsically amorphous and plural form of knowledge production and writing: the dialogue, or the chat. These dialogues originally took place in an online chatroom on the open-source, low-bandwidth platform, Freenode, organised at a set time suitable for the invited contributors who were located in multiple time zones. Each chatroom dialogue is framed around an original essay, written specifically for this book and focussed on a particular concept (e.g., decolonised time, networks, archives). The invited contributors/interlocutors respond to the essay, along with questions raised by the essayist during the live chat/dialogue. Each interlocutor introduces artworks, curatorial tactics, visual culture and archives as a means to ground the discussed concepts in varied yet always specific material culture of the global south. The book presents the records of the chats/dialogues and their archive of imagery, offering readers a networked and global comparative approach for thinking and visualising in/out of the global south