Cell separation technology is required for regenerative medicine and cancer therapy. Recently, flow cytometry is used as cell separation technology. However, it requires the labeling of cells and bioactivities cannot be maintainedafter the labeling. Therefore, cell separation bythermal responsiveness is attractive. Since the roughness exists on fibers, their hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity are expected to be increased on the surface with roughness. Here, we propose cell separation by thermoresponsive fibers including poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (NIPAAm). Poly-NIPAAm is a thermoresponsive polymer and it is hydrophilic below lower critical solution temperature (LCST) and hydrophobic above LCST. Random copolymer of NIPAAm, butylacrylate (BAA) and hydroxyethylacrylamide (HEAAm) was formed into nanofiber coating by electrospinning method. The SEM image of the fabricated fanofiber showed the uniform fiber structure(Fig.1) . As shown in Fig. 2, water contact angle at 27 oC and 40oCwere 38.9o and 70.6o respectively, and contact angle increased as temperature increased. This is due to the thermal responsivility of PNIPAAm included fibers. To evaluate the mass change of the cell adsorption and desorption, the NIPAAm was also fabricated by electrospinning on quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The wettability was changed according to the temperature that the nanofiber became hydrophobic at temperature above LCST and hydrophilic below LCST. Since QCM can detect a mass change by frequency shift, cell adhesion behavior can be quantified by changing temperature. We consider that this technique can be applied to micro sensing of malignant cells and early discovery and treatment of any disease.

Cell separation by thermoresponsive nanofibers using N-isopropylacrylamide

255th National Meeting (2018)

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