1 research outputs found
A Bioinformatics 3D Cellular Morphotyping Strategy for Assessing Biomaterial Scaffold Niches
Many
biomaterial scaffolds have been advanced to provide synthetic
cell niches for tissue engineering and drug screening applications;
however, current methods for comparing scaffold niches focus on cell
functional outcomes or attempt to normalize materials properties between
different scaffold formats. We demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D)
cellular morphotyping strategy for comparing biomaterial scaffold
cell niches between different biomaterial scaffold formats. Primary
human bone marrow stromal cells (hBMSCs) were cultured on 8 different
biomaterial scaffolds, including fibrous scaffolds, hydrogels, and
porous sponges, in 10 treatment groups to compare a variety of biomaterial
scaffolds and cell morphologies. A bioinformatics approach was used
to determine the 3D cellular morphotype for each treatment group by
using 82 shape metrics to analyze approximately 1000 cells. We found
that hBMSCs cultured on planar substrates yielded planar cell morphotypes,
while those cultured in 3D scaffolds had elongated or equiaxial cellular
morphotypes with greater height. Multivariate analysis was effective
at distinguishing mean shapes of cells in flat substrates from cells
in scaffolds, as was the metric L<sub>1</sub>-depth (the cell height
along its shortest axis after aligning cells with a characteristic
ellipsoid). The 3D cellular morphotyping technique enables direct
comparison of cellular microenvironments between widely different
types of scaffolds and design of scaffolds based on cell structure–function
relationships