Constrained Adherable Area of Nanotopographic Surfaces Promotes Cell Migration through the Regulation of Focal Adhesion via Focal Adhesion Kinase/Rac1 Activation

Jiwon Lim, Andrew Choi, Hyung Woo Kim, Hyungjun Yoon, Sang Min Park, Chia-Hung Tsai, Makoto Kaneko, Dong Sung Kim*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Cell migration is crucial in physiological and pathological processes such as embryonic development and wound healing; such migration is strongly guided by the surrounding nanostructured extracellular matrix. Previous studies have extensively studied the cell migration on anisotropic nanotopographic surfaces; however, only a few studies have reported cell migration on isotropic nanotopographic surfaces. We herein, for the first time, propose a novel concept of adherable area on cell migration using isotropic nanopore surfaces with sufficient nanopore depth by adopting a high aspect ratio. As the pore size of the nanopore surface was controlled to 200, 300, and 400 nm in a fixed center-to-center distance of 480 nm, it produced 86, 68, and 36% of adherable area, respectively, on the fabricated surface. A meticulous investigation of the cell migration in response to changes in the constrained adherable area of the nanotopographic surface showed 1.4-, 1.5-, and 1.6-fold increase in migration speeds and a 1.4-, 2-, and 2.5-fold decrease in the number of focal adhesions as the adherable area was decreased to 86, 68, and 36%, respectively. Furthermore, a strong activation of FAK/Rac1 signaling was observed to be involved in the promoted cell migration. These results suggest that the reduced adherable area promotes cell migration through decreasing the FA formation, which in turn upregulates FAK/Rac1 activation. The findings in this study can be utilized to control the cell migration behaviors, which is a powerful tool in the research fields involving cell migration such as promoting wound healing and tissue repair.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)14331-14341
Number of pages11
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume10
Issue number17
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 May 2018

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