机构：[a]College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou, China[b]Institute of Neuroscience, Soochow University, Suzhou, China[c]NGS Laboratory, GENEWIZ, Inc., Suzhou, China[d]Department of Neurology and Suzhou Clinical Research Centre of Neurological Disease, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China
Owing to its biocompatibility, noncytotoxicity, biodegradability and three-dimensional structure, vertically silicon nanowires (SiNWs) arrays are a promising scaffold material for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and relevant medical applications. Recently, its osteogenic differentiation effects, reorganization of cytoskeleton and regulation of the fate on stem cells have been demonstrated. However, it still remains unknown whether SiNWs arrays could affect the proliferation and neuronal differentiation of neural stem cells (NSCs) or not. In the present study, we have employed vertically aligned SiNWs arrays as culture systems for NSCs and proved that the scaffold material could promote the proliferation and neuronal differentiation of NSCs while maintaining excellent cell viability and stemness. Immunofluorescence imaging analysis, Western blot and RT-PCR results reveal that NSCs proliferation and neuronal differentiation efficiency on SiNWs arrays are significant greater than that on silicon wafers. These results implicate SiNWs arrays could offer a powerful platform for NSCs research and NSCs-based therapy in the field of neural tissue engineering.
基金：
This work was supported by Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research Funds [grant number
1402178C]; Foundation of Higher Education of Jiangsu Province [grant number 15JKB310022].
